Maribou State

Thank you! We’re good. Both currently sat on a flight to Miami for a DJ set at Space, and then onto a live show at Lollapalooza, Chicago.

Very excited. We absolutely love the venue but have only ever been to see others play, so it’s going to be a real joy to get to play there ourselves. We also have lots of friends in Barcelona, so we’re really looking forward to hanging out in the city for the week.

This will be a full-length live show, with our bandmates Jonny and Jonjo + Tallulah Ruby on vocals. The set covers lots of areas, with music from across all three of our albums — there are melodic and atmospheric moments paired with big expansive sections and dancefloor moments. It’s all part of the journey.

Unfortunately, we need to head off to some other festivals in the UK, so we’ll sadly miss the rest of the festival. So much great music to see, it’s hard to pick. If we could stay, I’d think you’d find us watching Sofia Kourtesis, Folamour, and DJ Tennis.

It was such a triumphant feeling. It’s no secret now that the record was extremely difficult to write, so we were both elated to finally get it out into the world. A huge sense of relief also washed over us as there were times when we didn’t think it would ever happen.

That’s right. We both suffered multiple physical and mental health issues, with varying severities, across the three-year period. This unsurprisingly informed the album writing process in a big way. Thankfully, the studio sessions eventually became the antidote to the issues we were facing, and we managed to keep the music sounding positive and hopeful, giving us something to strive towards.

Absolutely. It’s about finding hope in dark times. Staying resilient and learning that the growth you can experience through rough patches in life can really push you into a much stronger and happier place. It took a while for it to become clear, but once we realised how we had this outlet of creating music that, despite how we were feeling, could carry an air of positivity and hope, it gave us purpose, which in turn kept us moving forward.

A myriad of emotions were experienced — this was a three or four-year period after all. People go through a lot of changes in that time, even when things are going well! One thing that was different about this album, and a first for us, was that we really metabolised our emotions and experiences, and they seemed to be expressed in the music in a way that we had never done before. It’s our most personal record to date, and the catalysts that caused this, whilst painful in many ways at the time, have now become a bit of a silver lining.

To be honest, they mostly all took quite a long time. The workflow was very broken at times due to personal issues, plus we tried a new approach on this record that slowed us down a bit. The plan was to write a lot of demos, not progress them further, and then come back and form them into proper songs later down the line. We wanted to keep writing lots of new sketches without overthinking them in the hope of generating lots of new ideas. The unforeseen issue we faced was that when trying to work on these demos later in the process, we struggled to pull them away from their demo state. It’s dubbed demoitis and can be really challenging to escape.

It’s a mixture of old and new. We’ve had creative working relationships with Holly and North Downs for many years, so this is our comfort zone. Working with Gaidaa and Andreya was part of an active decision to put ourselves out there more and work with fresh energy.
They all bring very different things to the project, each in their own unique way. Mostly for us, it’s about connection, we love feeling connected to the people we’re working with, and there needs to be a trusting and relaxed vibe with each other for it to feel right.

This question really feeds into what I was saying above about our new approach to writing. In the past, we’ve found we get so bogged down with the sonic experimentation that the quality of the songs themselves has often been off balance with the production. By keeping things in their early demo form, this new approach allowed us to really see the songs for what they were before diving deep on the productions and the sound design.  I think mostly we succeeded, and the balance feels more central between the two sides, although the process was far from smooth.

Interestingly, we’ve felt like we’ve struggled to present a strong visual identity, so thank you! In terms of the approach, it’s mostly about attention to detail. We’re both heavily involved in all the creative decisions across the campaign, and I guess it’s just an extension of our creative processes in the studio — the push and pull of different opinions that eventually land somewhere we’re both happy with.

That’s a great question. It’s hard to think only of three shows in the past 10+ years of touring.  Our 2019 Glastonbury performance was very special. We played earlier in the day at the West Holts stage. The weather was perfect, and the crowd that turned up was the biggest we’d ever played to.
The three nights we played in February at Alexandra Palace in London were a huge milestone for us. The number of tickets sold was mind-blowing, but more importantly, we got to put on a show that we’d been working towards in our minds for a long time. Big production, full choir, big string section, woodwinds, etc. It was truly an amazing moment, and each night had such a different feeling to it, which was really interesting to witness. It still feels surreal that so many people wanted to come and see us play live.
Just the other week, we played at Rock Werchter festival in Belgium. It was an amazing tent that we played in, which felt like an arena. The crowd were incredible, full of energy, and everyone in the band had a great show, and all played really well. We all walked off stage and cited it as one of our favourite shows.

It’s difficult, to be honest. We have very supportive partners, friends and family, which is an unbelievable gift that we’re always grateful for.  A really tricky part is to maintain good physical and mental health, too. Over the years, we’ve all grown as people and often make better decisions to positively impact our experience of touring; however, the real fallout occurs when you get time off and your nervous system allows itself to come down off the adrenaline and constant stimulation.  That’s a rough ride no matter which way you go. 

For people who are searching for their sound, I would advise them to stop searching. You just need to try and write music that feels good to you and ignore external factors, genres or whether it fits into ‘a sound’. The more you lean into the sounds that you honestly enjoy making, the more the processes you learn and creative choices you make are refined, and in time, the sound will find itself. It’s about authenticity, which I think comes from patience and passion.
For those who are afraid to share stuff creatively, that’s really their own journey, and one I sympathise with, although I will say, the hurdle will always be there. There might be thoughts of ‘once it’s good enough, I will share’, unfortunately, from my experience, that moment doesn’t ever arrive. You have to rip the band-aid off and just get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.