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| Photo by by William Cooper Mitchel |
Oslo, Hackney
26th
March, 2015
After several years on the periphery, London production
two-piece Maribou State are edging closer towards the nerve-centre of UK
electronic music, as they prepare to Release their debut album ‘Portraits’, in
June. Tonight is their debut live show, and this notion of blending their
identity as producers and as DJs into a single entity is a familiar one, as
acts look for ways to translate the complexities of programming into the raw
passion of performance. Regular selectors on the festival and club scenes for several
years now, Maribou State have never strayed too far from their productions,
leaning towards the warmer, synth-heavy house sounds that come with an Ibiza
sunrise or mid-afternoon. This experience will no doubt have seeped into their
songwriting, using the ebbs and flows of the dancefloor to create songs that
centre around atmosphere and mood as much as they do melody and tone.
There is a full band set up tonight, with Davids and Ivory
taking guitar, synth and programming duties, and Johnny Cade and Holly Walker on
drums and vocals respectively. When electronic music like this is played on
live instruments, there’s a danger that it can land in the middle of the
authentic sounds of say a guitar or a drum kit, and the synthetic, digitised
aesthetic of the productions but falling short on both counts. Walker’s vocals
are so perfect in terms of pitch that they could easily be emerging from a
sequencer, whilst Cade manages to keep the beat so precisely that we could be
listening to a drum loop. So it’s a
testament to their ability as sound engineers and players that tonight still feels like a club show, with every crescendo
or every pause keeping the audience obediently in time.
Davids and Ivory are excellent at building these inviting,
all-encompassing soundscapes in a way that commands, but never smothers. And
despite Walker’s excellent vocals, Maribou State are still at their best during
the instrumental moments, carefully layering a diverse range of sonics until
they become these grand, rich walls of sound. The slow, measured synths at the
end of new single ‘Rituals’ come in like water filling up the room, creating
these gorgeous emotional swells that intertwine seamlessly between the
grandiose and the tranquil. There’s a genuine sense of human feeling bleeding
into each of these tracks, like the twinkling piano on opener ‘Moon Circles’,
or the affected vocal on ‘Midas’. And despite the largely synthetic pallet of
sounds on offer tonight, you can still feel the weight of emotional context
being fed through every note.
Maribou State have always been excellent producers. Tonight
though, there is evidence that they are prepared to move away from the more
immediate gratification of UK club culture in favour of something altogether
more considered, slowly nudging their listeners towards these moments of bliss
instead of arriving there fully formed. This is music to listen to on a bus
with your eyes closed or at your desk whilst your mind wanders as much as it is
within a club at four in the morning. These are complicated songs without ever
really sounding complicated, which
allows them to twist, turn and unfold completely naturally and of their own
accord.
It’s been over four years since their first single, so this
album has been a long time in the making. UK electronic music has changed and
mutated countless times between, and even with this brief rendition of ‘Portraits’
tonight, it feels like Maribou State are finally able to express what
electronic music means to them in a way that they’re comfortable with. It’s a
remarkably assured performance, striking the balance between club and live
music culture with surgeon like precision.
Mike Townsend
Set List
Moon
Circles
Midas
Wallflower
Steal
Tongue
Rituals
http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/live-reviews/maribou-state-make-live-debut-four-years-after-debut-single
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