Maribou State at Village Underground

Chris Davids and Liam Ivory have been making music together at electronic duo Maribou State for the past four years and tonight they are taking the stage at Shoreditch venue Village Underground. The gig sold out months ago, and the room is packed of quietly eager fans looking forward to seeing songs from 2015 album Portraits played live.

The pair arrive to a warm response from the crowd that is easily given when the first attempt at opener Rituals gets hit by technical issues, forcing a restart. Straddling across a bench of keyboards and sample machines along with a guitar and “Jonny on the drums”, the band’s disarming, dreamlike sound fills the room. Percussion comes mostly from the snare and cymbals, sitting on top of a plump bed of synth and distorted vocal samples that hum and mumble like a sleep-talker. As they move into Home the mid-tempo pace comes down half a notch and the texture of the sound gets more varied. The crowd are rapt in a half-hypnotised sway.

Regular collaborator Holly Walker comes out to cheers for Steal and her vocal dances playfully over the electronic instruments. The band crams thick wedges of sound into  crescendoes which build and then melt like a rising tide, producing a soothing, psychedelic sound that reverberates through and wraps around the bodies of those listening. Walker returns for The Clown and Tongue, which marks an energy peak from the crowd as they sense the end of the set approaching. Maribou State return to the stage quickly for the encore of their Norman Cook-approved remix of Praise You and build to a pulsing climax in this cozy 700-person venue. It’s a sound that will easily translate to the much larger KOKO for their next London gig in February and is magnetic enough to take a good proportion of tonight’s crowd along for a repeat.

Cath Willcox

For further information about Maribou State and future events visit here.

Listen to Praise You here: