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Kala
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| Editorial Reviews: | | |  | | Maya Arulpragasam, the British-based daughter of Sri Lankan refugees, delivered one of 2005's eye-popping debuts, Arular. For an album that proudly flaunted tin-can production, indecipherable South London slang, and lyrical nods to suicide bombers, it brought the woman who records under the name M.I.A. unexpected mainstream success--she followed its release by touring North America with Gwen Stefani and recording with Missy Elliott and Timbaland, while the single "Galang" made its way into a car commercial. Kala (the first release was named after her freedom-fighting father, this one after her mother) throws Arulpragasam's newfound pop credentials into the bustle of Bollywood rhythms, police sirens, 8-bit dancehall beats, Third World car horns, and street singers. Recorded across several continents, it presents a far more dynamic listening experience than her first album, especially with tracks like "Bamboo Banga," "Jimmy," and "Paper Planes." It's no less exhausting, though. What with the New Order sample, Timbaland cameo, and gunshot sound effects, there isn't a moment when it doesn't feel like you've unintentionally invited an entire carnival into your home. --Aidin Vaziri | |
| Custom Reviews: | |
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| | M.I.A. responds to the scrutiny and cynicism aimed at her in the past 18 months by puffing out her chest and asserting herself more strenuously than ever, half-baked agit-prop and all. In contrast to her comparatively sparkly and streamlined debut, Kala is clattering, buzzy, and sonically audacious, as well as a significant expansion of M.I.A.'s already big tent of sounds and her own work as a performer.
| | | Man, I felt so excited when I heard this album for the first time. It was like being 18 again and hearing "God Save The Queen" or "Anarchy in the UK" for the first time. My understanding of music just shifted abruptly - this is so interesting, and so provocative. I am excited by the doors opened up in this music, the hybridity of it, the contained chaotic juice of it. One of the most important records in a long time.
I'm going to look where she looks, because there is something intersting there.
| | A good first "world music" album to get | |
| | I heard MIA interviewed on the CBC radio show "Q" and I was intrigued by this woman and her background. The album was produced in a number of countries and clearly has a variety of influences that make each song interesting and unique. On several tracks the beat is infectious and the use of sound effects interwoven into the music is very clever. The sound of a rifle firing and reloading in the chorus on "paper planes" is worth the price of the album alone.
You will be hearing this album on dance floors all over the world in the very near future I'm sure. We haven't heard the end of MIA.
| | Coming back with power power! | |
| | M.I.A. is colour, rap, dance, wild jungle rhythms and a mad fusion style. The Sri Lankan rapper blew people away with her debut album, but she's actually topped herself in "Kala" -- she takes the same ingredients as before and smashes them together into a wilder, tighter album full of deliciously wild electro-funk-rap with a world-music flair.
"Road runner, road runner/Going hundred mile per hour/With your radio oooonnnnnn," she drawls detachedly over a skittering beat and the sound of racing engines.
The dancey beat kicks in, as she announces, "I'm big timer, it's the bamboo banga/You'll be hungry like the wolves hunting dinner dinner/And we're moving with the packs like hyena ena..." Things really blossom with the next two songs, the frenetic tribal rhythms of "Bird Flu," and the Bollywood-dance, horn-heavy "Boyz."
Having hooked us in with three catchy songs, she expands her sound further: funky hip-hop, disco, distorted grimy raps, playfully violent pop, detached raps over electronic anthems, tribal house, and combinations of all of the above. It ends with a mellow, catchy tune that seems to be contradicting the whole album's mood, with M.I.A. saying "Calm down calm down CALM down!"
In the end, "Kala" is actually kind of intoxicating -- M.I.A. crams so much sound into less than an hour that it's almost a shock when your speakers go silent. Stylewise she hasn't changed much at all, but somehow the music is tighter and smoother, with fewer rough patches.
Her music is the most astounding part, splattering styles like a musical Jackson Pollock -- reggae, afrobeat, traditional Asian music, house, hip-hop, Bollywood, and funk. And the raucous, dancey instrumentation is equally diverse -- tribal drums, violins and horns paired with crazy beats and sampling (birds, cars and guns), along with some harmonica, handclaps, and weird sound effects.
In fact, the only letdown is "Jimmy." Seriously, lightweight disco? It doesn't fit in at all.
But as much fun as this splash of ethnic fusion is, M.I.A. doesn't leave out the meaning ("Hands up!/Guns out!/Represent/the world town!"). It's crammed with Africa, war, dancing, jungle parties, and the feeling that she's about to smash down your door and introduce you to the third world ("I put people on the map who have never seen a map!") whether you like it or not.
M.I.A.'s second album is a glorious cacophony, a joyous graffiti mural. "Kala" is crazy party music with a serious message, and the guts to make you dance while you listen.
| | An intense, body-shaking, mind-bending album. | |
| | Over a few years, British musician MIA - aka Mathangi Arulpragasam - has realised far-flung ambitions.
Her 2005 debut album "Arular" proved an electric shock to the system, its ballsy mashup of street styles and pop hooks earning a Mercury nomination in U.K.
Mia's new album "Kala" is named after her mother, but like "Arular" it mixes up musical ideas from around the world and crams them into a club- and radio-friendly collage of tunes.
This CD drives her music in even more intrepid directions
In fact this time, rather than work with British producers such as Steve Mackey of Pulp and the pop guru Richard X, MIA travelled widely to authentically capture the world music that intrigues her.
The result is fantastic.
"Birdflu" features the sound of traditional Indian drummers, whom MIA recorded on a trip to the sub-continent last year.
"Down River" throbs with didgeridoo she recorded at a workshop for aboriginal children in Australia. The tribal pound of "Hussel", meanwhile, was recorded with a Nigerian-born London-based rapper, African Boy.
Whereas "Arular" was dominated by bouncy funk carioca beats, "Kala" feels like a more mixed, cosmopolitan affair.Recorded in India, Australia, Trinidad, Japan, Britain and Baltimore with producers including Switch and Blaqstarr, it sounds like an infectious international travelogue.
Looking at that luminous, vibrant front cover, or the ludicrously colourful video for "Boyz", M.I.A. seems more like a textile artist than anything else.
If the driving force behind her music is a restless, globe-trotting quest for identity, that makes sense - a collage is a beautiful way of drawing disparate pieces together to create a whole that exists as something important in itself.
"Kala" meets the critics head on, taking her dancefloor smash-and-grab sound global.
She twangs the boundaries of taste both lyrically ("Take me on a genocide tour/Take me on a trip to Darfur") and musically. But a knockout's a knockout, however messy the bout.
All in all, Kala is an intense, body-shaking, mind-bending album, far more ambitious than most pop around.
My favourite tracks are "Paper Planes", "20 Dollars" and "Turn".
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