Malakai, Edinburgh Picturehouse, 23/04/09

Photo courtesy: http://4.bp.blogspot.com

I had been told to expect a musical apocalypse, yet for Malakai, judgement day is seeming increasingly difficult; even God himself would need time to define the genre of such a wide ranging performance. If apocalypse is now, I’m struggling to keep up.
‘You’ve got to hold on to your world’ proclaim Brighton’s brightest duo, but when the world they create covers drum n bass, generic indie and somewhat monotonous noise within forty five minutes, holding on to it suddenly becomes a mammoth task; some might say of apocalyptic proportions.
    To admirers of film and art, Malakai are more than a whispered success. There are few musicians today who can name Banksy amongst their friends, and even fewer who can create a decent album track sampling cult movies, but perhaps their most obscure move yet is to provide support to established indie band ‘The Doves’. Eclectic Malakai may be, but the radical contrast between simple and sustainable indie and the musical tour of genre and rhythm provided by Brighton’s boys seemed to baffle the traditional Doves’ audience. Baffled the audience may be, but impressed none the less.
    Having once been described as having ‘dubstep running through their bones and hip hop through their fingers’, I expected nothing short of beat dropping Brightoners. Their performance however was incredibly different. A mix of indie, bass and metal was to be detected in their radical set, a little something for everyone some might say. The show was less drum n bass, more peaks and troughs; some outstanding moments matching some lost moments of eccentricity on a crowd of avid Doves’ fans.
    I feel I can safely say that after their well sustained unconventional set I was both impressed and intrigued, the boys certainly have talent. How to place them in a genre? God only knows.