Blackout - Malaa (Alter Ego)

The second project of Malaa's double album is from a new face — the face of Malaa (Alter Ego), which is, well, Malaa's alter ego — and with it comes a new camo mask. Which would be great, if either album actually cared about the masks or the double album idea at all.

Whilst the first side of this double album, "All In", was in Malaa's forte of bass house — and hence was reasonably precise in its production — "Blackout" explores new territory, alternating jump up DnB and hard techno through its tracklist. But it's just not as clean. Much of the jump up is flatly mixed and shoehorned in with loud heavy sustains, borderline painful to listen to at times simply due to the sheer amount of noise with too-sharp edges and not enough polish. And much of the techno does a lot with acidic, shifting sound design and deep kicks, yet the sampling is repetitive and shallow and tracks tend to drag on and become a monotonous listen. Neither part of this alternation is done particularly well. But I do have to commend "Blackout", at the very least, for its will to try something different. Whilst the jump up is unrefined, and whilst the hard techno is superficial, "Blackout" does still attempt to standout, much unlike its sister album "All In". Malaa's willingness to branch out into DnB and techno, paired with his structural intuition to alternate the two genres (almost), allows "Blackout" to seem interesting on the surface, and it does show. The heavier, harder-hitting nature of this project greatly exceeds its fatigued former one, and "Blackout" finds grace in that, if nothing else. Because, at the very least, Malaa's alter ego has achieved a sense of character that the primary Malaa alias was unable to find, a score of treasure that the latter was left scrabbling in the dark for. Granted, the fact that this album has more character doesn't make it a good album per se, it just makes it better, in my eyes, than the other side of this double album — and yet I can appreciate that for sure. At the end of the day, it suffers from slightly unkempt production, sure, but many would argue character and flair is the single most imperative quality in any work of art, albums included, and I find myself agreeing with those many.

So no, I don't quite like this as a project. No, I will not be coming back to it, aside from a few select tracks. Yes, I'm very glad it exists to spice up this double album, saving it from the (lack of) damage its other half dealt. And no complaints about the length, either — as I stated in my review of "All In", this runtime hovering around 30 minutes feels perfect for each side of a double album such as this. Ultimately, I do think "Blackout" wins this strange album faceoff, but suffice to say the battle was fought rather halfheartedly. Check out "All In" by Malaa — that's the main alias — for the first half of the double album (and check out my review of it too!).