Maribou State is taking a hiatus from music after a final live performance next week.
The renowned English electronica duo revealed they’ll step away from the stage and the studio in an interview with Mixmag published today, but not before one last headline live show at London’s LIDO Festival on the UK’s Bank Holiday Monday, August 31.
Capping off the London-based group’s 18-month touring run, the performance will bring their full orchestra live show to life, joined by regular bandmates Talulah Ruby, Jonny Cade, and Jonjo Williams. The upcoming hiatus marks Maribou State’s second rest from music after the duo “pressed pause” on the project in 2024.
In the interview, members Chris Davids and Liam Ivory cited writer’s block and health struggles as reasons for the break, as well as challenges they had to overcome to complete and release their latest album, Hallucinating Love. The album’s deluxe edition landed on Ninja Tune last Friday.
“Coming off the 2019 tour and going straight into lockdown was brutal timing. We’d been running on no sleep, not really looking after ourselves, then suddenly we were grounded with nothing to distract from it. That’s when things caught up with me personally,” Ivory told Mixmag. “My anxiety spiked hard, it turned into a constant health anxiety, and underneath it was a real lack of purpose and malaise.”
“Chris was dealing with his own version of it, although physically as well as mentally, and for a long stretch we were both struggling but in completely different ways,” he continued. “It wasn’t easy to write music from that place and sessions often felt like wading through mud.”
On their final performance at LIDO Festival, Ivory said: “We want it to feel less like an ending and more like a marker, a chance to give this album and this whole period the send-off it deserves before we properly step back. Playing a hometown headline show at the end of it all, with people who’ve been on this journey with the record, feels like the most fitting way to put it to bed.”
You can read the full interview at mixmag.net.
Featured image courtesy: Maribou State. Credit: @_liamoz