Maribou State gets down to business (the business of making you get down) at Bob Clearmountain’s Apogee Studio.
Maribou State gets down to business (the business of making you get down) at Bob Clearmountain’s Apogee Studio.
Video directed by Kylie Hazzard, all photos by Ian Kose.

Maribou State: KCRW Live from Apogee Studio

Intimate performances, fresh sounds, and candid conversations with a view.

Written by Marion Hodges

English duo (and former grade school classmates) Liam Ivory and Chris Davids have made waves as Maribou State since releasing their debut single “Got Me Down” in 2011. That track, and the singles and EPs that followed, revealed an assured approach to dance music: gentle-yet-adventurous beats pulsating beneath vocals and chord progressions imbued with soulful intensity, often with a sense of empathetic melancholy. The pair was quickly in demand on the remix scene, reworking tracks for Lana Del Rey, Kelis, and Fatboy Slim. Their collaborators on original tracks include Khruangbin, Jono Mcleery, and most frequently Holly Walker.

They also became a steady presence on festival lineups throughout the back half of the 2010s — Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds, Primavera Sound, and plenty more. And yet, somehow their Coachella debut was held off until this year.





Between the SoCal megafest’s two weeks, Maribou State hit Bob Clearmountain’s Apogee Studio as a five piece — Ivory, Davids, Jonny Cade (drums), Jonjo Williams (percussion, bass), and Talulah Buchanan (vocals) — for a dynamic blend of sounds from their 2025 LP Hallucinating Love and multiple cuts from their 2015 debut LP Portraits (for the real heads). 

Get into it in the video at the top of this page and dig into the interview video below with KCRW’s Tyler “Boogie” Boudreax, in which the artists open up about Davids’ serious bought with the rare brain condition Chiari malformation, COVID depression, album sequencing, field recordings, and how Hallucinating Love as an album became “quite British.”

More: Explore KCRW Live From sessions







This KCRW Live From session was recorded and mixed by Bob Clearmountain at Apogee Studio. Learn more at Apogeedigital.com

Credits:
KCRW Music Director: Alejandro Cohen
Interviewer: Tyler Boudreaux
Live Mix Recording Engineer: Bob Clearmountain
Lead Engineer / FOH: Brandon Duncan Assistant Engineer: Ira Becker
Lighting Design: Jack Arthur
Director / Editor / Colorist: Kylie Hazzard
Camera operators: Kylie Hazzard, Milana Burdette, Rachel Bickert
Executive Producer: Ariana Morgenstern
Senior Producer: Anna Chang
Event Producers: Krissy Barker, Liv Surnow, Maggie O’Rourke
Digital Producer: Marion Hodges
Digital Editorial Manager: Andrea Domanick
Art Director: Evan Solano

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