Live review – Malibu / Holy Other Live @ King’s Place, London 04/02/2023

Two generations of ambient electronic royalty descend on London

We might have never expected it to happen, but the pairing of Malibu and Holy Other – two towering names in electronic music from different generations – for a rare live appearance at London’s concert hub King’s Place last weekend proved an un-precedented treat.

It was 2012 when Holy Other’s music first graced our ears in the fallout of a net-based microgenre that some may call witchcore or witch house. Hypnotic, sample-stretchy plodders like ‘Know Where’ and ‘Past Tension’ came in the wake of his debut album, Held, for Tri Angle Records. Juddering video pieces cobbled together out of found footage cropped up on YouTube, accompanying them. If his mysterious oeuvre wasn’t provable enough (his first live sets had him wear a trademark hooded robe), the artist is notoriously interview-shy, perhaps not-so-subtly taking after the wilful obscurity of electronic music’s darling, Burial. It took nearly another 10 whole years for Holy Other to release another album, Lieve, which seemed to crop up out of nowhere on the artist’s own imprint ‘ㇹ’. Its press releases insisted it was made in a remote observatory in The Wirral, with the artist gazing at the stars while using the natural acoustics of the space to sample and reprocess sound for what would become the next phase in his discography. The news of Lieve produced something close to a Mandela effect in many fans; this reviewer was no more than 12 years old on first listen to Holy Other’s music, and by the time Lieve was released, he was on the verge of forgetting about it entirely. Make no mistake, though – we interpret this more as a clever attention-grabbing technique, cementing the elements of nostalgia and reverse-deja-vu in Holy Other’s music, and the assumption that it must take plenty of patience to make music with such tender handicraft.

Malibu, to boot, is a relatively fresher artist, which lends to present-day excitements and zeitgeists, and a real sense of a torch being passed. Equally elusive and a master of angelic imagecraft, she’s become a favourite on the international circuit for her gut-wrenchingly stringy beatless music, tempered by her own ASMR-ish vocals. That’s in addition to bootleg remixes of oldschoolers such as Push and (again) Burial; radio mixes for her very own series United In Flames; lo-fi ambient trance as DJ Lostboi; and collabs with artists of around the same age as her, with a view to brighter and edgier (dare we say, drained) sounds, such as Femi, Merely, YEAR0001 and Clairo. Malibu’s capacity for intergenerational collaboration is proven: she’s also done dreamy vocal features on tracks by R&S mainstay John Beltran for his longstanding (and still going) project, Placid Angles. Credentialisms aside, it’s her original music that stands out. Her star project, by far, is One Life, a pensive five-tracker that effortlessly tickles strings, of both the instrumental and the heart variety. Its follow-up, Palaces Of Pity, is forthcoming, and contains references to everything from obscure coming-of-age films to Greek epics, locking in a boundless conceptual scope despite the minimal palette.

It’s no wonder, then, that this was a heartfelt gig. Malibu was scheduled first. In a puffy white parka, cap and boots, she cut the image of an artist about to perform against the numinous backlighting of the Northern Lights on a remote Arctic expedition, not a well-heated inner London concert venue. Keener eyes would have also noticed the on-stage fan, giving her performance a tailwind, softly billowing her hair about. And if that weren’t enough to paint a uniquely lovesick picture, she was stationed in front of a softly swaying stage light, which the show’s rider notes say is to mimic the soft and distant shifting of a lighthouse witnessed far from the shore. A seamless set using a Roland Sampler, mic and laptop ensued, with everything you’d expect: softly sung harmonies, gut-plunging low sweeps, gargantuan chords, and the occasional lull in which Malibu would stop and sensitively mutter into the mic. It was simple and effective, colouring the mind with a mood of suspenseful heartbreak. It also conjured up distinct images: sleet storms, final coastal goodbyes, hugs on half-remembered mountaintops…

Holy Other followed after a brief interval. Undoubtedly most would have noticed his entrance from stage left, in which he charmingly seemed to trip over a wire and nearly stumble into the space, a blip followed up by a coy smile and a wave. More interesting still was his lack of a full-on monastic robe, unlike prior performances – this time he wore a simple black T-shirt and hoodie. Both of these put forward a matter-of-fact, not overserious, persona, with his new career phase plainer than ever to see. A long and tempo-shifty live set ensued, with insiders confirming his use of two top-range, yet niche pieces of gear – an Empress Zoia and a 1010 Blackbox. We’re not surprised such obscure instruments were used, as it’s often difficult to find ways to integrate complex time signature changes, such as those heard in Holy Other’s music, into live sets. Speaking of metric oddity, new versions of old classics (‘With U’, ‘Yr Love’) were heard, often weaving in and out dissociatively into footworky unreleased exclusives – but all nevertheless falling in line to the artist’s overall moonlit, silken sound. A stellar visual show by Pedro Maia backed it, featuring quick-cut shots of microscopic ephemera, strange lights, and light-trailed hand movements. Towards the end, these visuals cut off, replaced only by a reverb-heavy disco slowdown, and a strobelit mist. Once more, the mystery was back – Holy Other had literally disappeared in a plume of smoke.

Jude Iago James