New Music for Lockdown 5 – Portraits by Maribou State

Well it had to happen eventually, didn’t it? shame it happened less than a week in.

I’v left writing this till the very end of the day, it’s 23:31 as I type this, and that’s because I don’t have a lot to say about this album. Portraits is the first album by British electronica duet Maribou State with some lovely vocal work from featured artist Holly Walker.

There’s not much more I can think to write. The music is gentle electronica, not quite lo-fi hip-hop, not nu-jazz, just beige. It’s the plain rice pudding of music.

I listen to the albums I’m trying for the first time whilst I work and every other album I have had moments when I’ve had to pull myself away from my spreadsheets or writing because I’ve either been confused, blown away, or had to go back and check what I listened to was actually that bonkers.

I didn’t get anything like that from this. It’s an easy listen, very relaxing and very calming, and I’ll add a few of the tracks onto my ‘chill’ playlist. But apart from that it sparked no emotion in me apart from boredom.

There is one track that I actively liked and listened back to a few times, Midas. Partly because Holly Walker’s vocals are lovely but also because there was a bit where the drummer did something really nice and I wanted to hear it a few times to get in my head.

This album has been made for the people who like electronica, and I highly doubt it was made to be listened through in one sitting. If these came on shuffled up in among hours worth of other songs from other genres, then yeah I likely wouldn’t press skip. But in this form it was a slog. At times like crawling through treacle, and others like endlessly falling, but either way the outlook was bland.

Well made, skilled musicians, great vocals from Holly, but overall sleep-inducing.

I literally cannot think of anything else to add about this album, so here’s a link toBetty Boop in Snow White from 1933.

Tomorrow, we are going to head to the desert, smoke up and look at the stars with a health does of early ’90s stoner rock. Yay.