MARIBOU STATE Vinyl & CDs

Review: Hallucinating Love, Maribou State's third album, is their most personal yet and was crafted amid intense challenges. After scrapping initial drafts, Chris Davids and Liam Ivory created the album as a form of "musical therapy" to help them reconnect and heal. With soaring strings, evocative samples, and guest vocals from Holly Walker and Andreya Triana, Hallucinating Love captures both intimacy and grandeuriperfectly suited for Ninja Tune's indie sensibilities and a fitting soundtrack for hopeful, communal reunions.

Review: Maribou State's Hallucinating Love is their first record in over five years, following 2019's acclaimed Kingdom In Colour (which concluded the mid-to-late 2010s in which the pair shot to superstardom). Centring on one core theme: togetherness, it tells the fraught yet reinvigorating tale of late mental health diagnoses, pandemic lockdowns, peaks and troughs of inspiration, rest and recovery and time spent honing and reforming their core craft. Battling several several health problems and impasses, the duo of Chris Davids and Liam Ivory have beaten the odds here, once again crafting a wonder of a dance record, which builds on their distinctive downbeat-upbeat funk-pop style whilst still forming a swell sonic backbone for what is sure to be one of the dewiest of oncoming British festival seasons, spring and summer 2025.

Review: British duo Maribou State are back with their first full-length since 2015's breakthrough debut album Portraits, and was a result of a two year long journey to find their sound. Story has it that upon returning to the UK to begin work on new material, they relocated their studio at the back of their home in Hertfordshire to London - only to struggle in finding their creative flow. They began to look outward, making regular excursions out of the city, setting up temporary studio spaces throughout Asia, Oceania, the Middle East to North America and beyond - the result of which is this tremendous LP. Highlights include "Turnmills" their tribute to the now defunct but legendary clubbing institution, the dreamy lo-slung pop of "Nervous Tics" which continues their long standing collaboration with vocalist Holly Walker, and another fabulous hook-up with Houston based purveyors of exotica Khruangbin - on the sublime "Feel Good".

Review: Their famous mix series might be gone but fabric continue to offer fantastic physical products in the form of their own Presents serve. It is Maribou State who take care of this one and are a fine fit having plated the club many times in their early years. They use it as a chance to serve up a sweaty, peak time mix that draws on sounds you might not necessarily hear in the club itself. It features some of their own new music in the form of "Mother", "Strange Habits" and a rework of Radiohead's "Reckoner".