M.I.A.’s outrageously lovley new album, “Kala”

M.I.A.’s outrageously lovley new album, “<a mce_thref=

MIA’s new album, “KALA”

Ok, so the weather outside is frightful…what a fantastic day to pick up M.I.A.’s outrageously lovley new album, “Kala,” plug in and settle into your work station so you can plough through that overflowing inbox of yours with 1000s of emails.

The playful melodies on this summer’s hit “Mango Pickle Down River,” will have you dancing around the office. The London-born Sri Lankan rapper-singer-political artist specializes in a wonderous new kind of world music — a global sound clash complete with a perfect balance of imagination and invention. This song is definitely on ‘repeat’ on the i-pods of hipsters trekking around town this summer; featuring a group of aboriginal kiddie rappers known as the Wilcannia Mob, the song comes complete with a droney didgeridoo that makes for one of the most groovey and unconventional bass lines of 2007!

The album was recorded all around the world (Japan, India, Trinidad, Jamaica, Australia, the United States), and apparently just about everything was in play during those sessions, from: African chants, Caribbean soca, Brazilian baile funk, Western rock, Bollywood tunes, Baltimore club beats. The result: a mix that sounds like the index from “The Rough Guide to World Music” pressed through a hip-hop/Buddha Bar filter, as it provides a perfect venue for M.I.A.’s worldly lyrical concerns, which tend to revolve around poverty, boys and war (in no particular order).

MIA

M.I.A (aka Mathangi Maya Arulpragasam)

In the standout track, “Bamboo Banga,” 30 year old M.I.A., refers to Somalia, Angola, Ghana, India and Sri Lanka. And that’s just in the first lines of the first stanza of an uncontainable song that marries a Bollywood sample to a re-purposed Jonathan Richman lyric — superb! Here, Richman’s “Roadrunner” has been sent to the Third World, where M.I.A. sings of a beggar banging on the door of a Hummer. Love it!

Kala,” an album assembled by M.I.A. and several great producers (primarily London-based Switch and Philadelphia’s Diplo), features songs that jump out of your headphones. M.I.A.’s powerful voice comes through, whether she’s rapping about war (“Boyz,” with its horn loops and marching-band beat) or the price of AK-47s in Liberia (“20 Dollar,” which uses a slow-mo sample from New Order’s “Blue Monday”).

Jimmy” is a remake of a Bollywood love song, done up here as a German disco number, can you say Boney M?!? But MIA makes it hers as the song does include a reference to the genocide in Darfur.

[youtube rDoTKVLHNzA nolink]

Standout tracks:Bamboo Banga,” “Birdflu,” “Mango Pickle Down River

Tags:
,