A roadie’s nightmare!

MARIBOU State are a sound guy’s nightmare.

A techie hoping for an easy night setting up some drums, a bass, some guitars and a mic need not apply – entering the Rescue Rooms it was impossible not to notice that it looking more like air traffic control than a gig-ready stage.

There were banks of samplers, stacks upon stacks of keyboards, arrays of pedal boards all across the stage. The bassist’s area was coccooned in samplers, cowbells, shakers and bongos. Even the drummer had an surprise bell hidden under his stool which he whipped out at one point.

But credit to the band this was not for show.

No button went unpressed, no knob was left untwiddled in the band’s live debut in Nottingham.

The music on the group’s second full-length LP, Kingdoms In Colour, is a change from their previous work.

They’ve stepped away from the chillout room and headed straight towards the dancefloor.

But while this in some ways has made their sound simpler, their rich and textured trademark style is as complex as ever.

Their sound ebbs and flows, songs segue into each other – and at one point we drifted into a slowburning multi-track instrumental build from the early set salvo of Home and the Khruangbinsampling Feel Good.

But by contrast the real crowdpleasing highlights of the set were still those moments that felt like standalone songs – normally when vocalist Holly Walker was warmly welcomed to the stage: The Clown, from their first album, and new track Nervous Tics both had the whole room moving.

In fact, the biggest compliment I can pay them is that they had a wallflower like myself dancing, sober, on a school night.

Perhaps the dancefloor is the best place for them to be.