Herb Sundays 82: Malibu
Temporary wonder and the hyperreal music of French artist Barbara Braccini
Herb Sundays 82: Malibu (Apple, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon). Art by Michael Cina.
“there is still time to look at a tired sun and drive away.” - Malibu (on her playlist)
Malibu is one of a handful of personas devised by French musician Barbara Braccini who “leaves traces of herself scattered across the Internet under different musical aliases.” Her bio continues: “As DJ Lostboi, she produces from the lens of a brazen teenager, looping and stretching smash hits from Lil Uzi Vert, Charli XCX, Nelly Furtado. As belmont girl, she serves up more edits of her favorite tracks, this time drenching them in an overwhelming sense of euphoria and melancholy.”
A very modern kind of success, Malibu emotes in small moves. She has no albums to date, only EPs ands other songs/remixes, and every IG post or obscure Soundcloud mix feels like a film still from a greater whole. There's also an ASMR component with her vocal hooks but it’s not twee. Her music is obviously very personal but it doesn’t trade in overt narrative, it instead could be soundtrack bait for a film like Heat 2 (let’s say 2026), woozy and immense, great for a tense chase scene on an airport tarmac in the gloaming, while the bad guy (good guy) almost gets away.
Malibu’s music perhaps belongs in the tradition of romantic ambient kneebucklers such as Gigi Masin, or her contemporary Caterina Barbieri, whom she includes on this mix: Artists who seek catharsis in sweeping gestural beauty. The central distinctive touch is that she’s firmly internet-era, and maybe more akin to Pure Moods ersatz in places than her usual cohort. Her sonics use source material from Pop, New Age, and Trance, which is why she was an easy match for a Herb playlist.
But for all this sincerity there’s also an depressive ambivalence on display that sort of keeps the whole thing earthbound. She explains the origin of the alias in an interview in First Floor last year:
FF: What inspired you to pick Malibu as your artist name in the first place?
M: To be honest, I'm not sure what the truth is anymore. It was a long time ago. It might have been from an episode of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills called “Malibu Beach Party,” or it could have been from Hotmail. It would give you a username, and mine was Blu174 or something. Originally I went by Maliblu, which was kind of a pun on that, but then I switched it to Malibu.
As far as rookie cards, her proper introduction as Malibu, a song called “Held” appears on the PAN label’s instant classic 2017 compilation Mono No Aware (a song she downplays the value of now) which helps establish the gothic grandeur of the collection and showed her adeptness at mood creation. As Herb 80, Philip Sherburne wrote for Pitchfork: “The song moved through four distinct movements in just six minutes; its careful juxtaposition of elements—filmic synthesized strings, ASMR-grade whispers, an eerily Auto-Tuned lullaby—was reminiscent of an immaculately arranged terrarium. But despite the promise contained in that verdant miniature world, for anyone wanting more from Malibu, pickings were slim.”
Malibu hasn’t exactly been prolific since, but her consistent monthly United In Flames show on NTS has been a good way to catch what she’s up to. Around the same time as “Held”, the composer Julianna Barwick discovered her music in the background of an Instagram video. “I let the video cycle seemingly endlessly as I thought, this is maybe the most beautiful music I have ever heard,” Barwick wrote and would commission a release on Joyful Noise Recordings’ White Label series. Braccini also caught the attention of the oblique UNO NYC imprint who have helped release her EPs One Life (2019) and Palaces of Pity (2022) as well as remixes from artists such as Barwick, Evian Christ (who appears on this mix), and Kelly Moran.
Her “healthy irreverence for taste hierarchies” separates her from many of her more po-faced peers. Her love of Progressive House/Trance which is documented in her NTS show and makes sense as a prereq for her version of transcendent ambient also flares up in her 2021 FACT mix, where she screws down major label New Age and Hooj Choons Progressive into custardy yarn, until all of it blurs out into a stardust fade.
Visually, the Malibu brand exists in a snow globe of protection and is better for it. We rarely see her properly in situ, save an ASMR vid or merchandise photoshoot but there is always some remove, some distance. Though not faceless, the project’s visual front feels akin to the insouciance of the best fashion photography or the aloofness of a European airport fragrance advert, neither is a criticism in these pages. The hi-fi/lo-fi depth of her music is also found in her videos and photos, maybe akin to Glen Luchford’s ‘90s work for Prada, a hyperreal but muted palette, great for attaching your own emotions to. It doesn’t really need to do much to get you there, everything is the waves crashing in your mind.
Malibu’s Herb 82 playlist helps connect the various capitols of her musical map and delivers on the Malibu promise of a tangible patchwork of moods. She’s got a retro-fitted Power Glove on and is moving songs around Minority Report (2002) style from her modernist beachfront compound. We find brooders from Lorn and Oneohtrix and an almost unspeakably good remix of Spooky (the 90s electronic project of Duncan Forbes and Sasha co-producer Charlie May) by Detroit’s Echospace. Then we get the space rock of Loveliescrushing, a spoken-word interlude from Lana into a sky-ripper drone metal cut, eventually settling into a Herbaceous finale of Mazzy Star/Sheryl Crow/Vanessa Carlton, like a Street Fighter II combination finishing move. This strand of 2002 Sheryl Crow sounds like what they pump through the cabin on an imaginary Virgin flight as you board, mood lighting set and the visible A/C mist blasting at your ankles. When the final piano vamp of Carlton’s almost billion streamer rings out, you may get another chance at fresh eyes.
It’s Spring storm season here in NYC and in Detroit where Movement Festival is happening, each with those sudden showers, that quick expanse of weather to heighten the emotion of the new Summer like an awakened crush. While checking out Malibu’s work, the closest art experience I could pull up was Storm Room by Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller which I was lucky to see an installation of many years ago. You can enjoy it on video and you should, but it is indeed, or was, an actual space you can sit inside while a computer-controlled simulacrum of a thunderstorm plays out with boomy floorboards and all. The effect is both one of reality and memory, in that you can relate to taking shelter, but find yourself through the lens of fantasy. Your mind wants to figure out how you got to this space but you would rather not think too hard and just experience it. You are both there and not there.
From the field: mixes for the long weekend/summer
Mellow: I mentioned the Midwestern Ulyssa label/brand in the Blackbird Spyplane Herb 77 dispatch, and now they’ve gone and started a ‘Stack and there’s a summer kick-off mix (“Lake Toe”) inside.
Less Mellow: Outerwear enthusiasts, and general good guys, gum.mp3 (who we released an EP from this Spring), Swami Sound and Dazegxd form like Voltron for “Elida Summit” events and took over the roof at Elsewhere this week. Luckily, we already have a recording of the affair and it’s a Laff-A-Lympics of hooks from Garage to Footwork alongside various ungovernable bootlegs/re-works.
All Over: As stated, it’s Movement Weekend in Detroit, and last year this inspired me to reach out to a gaggle of great DJs to ask them for their fave all-time mixes, have a look.
