Special Edition Repress
Opening with hazed vocals layered over submerged Café Del Mar guitar licks, Reese bass and dizzying, phased strings, Malibu adopts the weightless motion of Chicane or Banco de Gaia if their music was piped into an empty swimming pool and recorded to an iPhone - like some hazed memory of a hedonism zoomers were promised but never inherited. Orbital’s early ‘90s emosh classic ‘Halcyon’ looms large over proceedings; as if Kirsty Hawkshaw’s doe-eyed lalalalala’s were played at a 10th of their intended speed, draped over that TX81Z “lately” bassline like velvet. The original was written as a tribute to brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll’s mother, who was addicted to benzodiazepine derivative Halcion; and it feels fitting that the narcotic sound it inspired has become a defining marker of our age. In fact, there’s a melancholy, medicinal subtext throughout the album that’s hard to ignore; blind panic reduced to an emotional cinder, longing strings, soaring vocals and comedown vibes. Malibu makes music that tries to articulate a blurred emotion that’s almost impossible to define, and while so much Ambient numbs by design, here feelings are its defining feature.With cello provided by Oliver Coates and Madelen Dressler-Vollsaeter, and guitar from Florian Le-Prisé, the album’s sense of intimacy assumes an almost impossibly grand sense of scale, as temporally liminal and neon-lit as Burial’s ‘In McDonalds’, made for a world that’s now completely out of reach.
