M I A Kala CD

Personnel: DJ Ability (scratches); The Wilcannia Mob.
Additional personnel: Afrikan Boy, Timbaland.
Audio Mixers: Switch; Mark "Spike" Stent.
Photographers: M.I.A. ; Liz Johnson Artur; Michael Kamber; Janette Beckman.
Even before M.I.A. (Maya Arulpragasam) debuted in 2005 with ARULAR, the blogosphere was already abuzz about her, engaging in the kind of discourse normally reserved for academic dissertations. Whether hailed as a canny postmodern pastiche or dismissed as inauthentic cultural pirating, the music, a lively pan-global mash-up of regional dance music styles, seemed to be emanating simultaneously from every ghetto, favela, and council-flat within earshot. As if to call out her detractors, M.I.A. returns for another shot of explosive, politically charged and globally conscious dance music on her second album, KALA.
Lacking the patchwork quality of the debut, KALA is a more cohesive and polished affair, though it matches its predecessor for shear visceral thrills. Recorded across several different continents, and featuring the production talents of Timbaland, Switch, and Blaqstarr, as well as longstanding collaborator Diplo, the globetrotting beat makers mine sources as varied as funk carioca, Baltimore bounce, and the occasional ludicrously placed sound-effect (a squawking chicken). The gloriously bombastic lead single, "Boyz," kicks off the party with a blaring horn loop, carnival percussion, and a stuttering Bollywood vocal sample, while M.I.A. merrily chants the chorus in her sing-song faux patois. The twittering, beat-heavy "Bird Flu" sounds a bit like what you might expect--jagged beats create syncopated poly-rhythms, while birds chirp feverishly against Arulpragasam's bratty invective. But the irreverent cultural re-appropriation doesn't stop at her borrowing from the third world; clever nods to the Clash, New Order, and even Jonathan Richman appear in unexpected and cheeky combinations, offering further proof that M.I.A.'s potent cross-cultural grab bag is as sonically audacious as ever.
Kala and Arular are similar in that they are both wildly vigorous and wholly enjoyable albums, generous with blunt-force beats, flurries of percussion, riotous vocals (with largely inconsequential lyrics), and fearless stylistic syntheses that seem to view music from half of the planet's countries as potential source material. But Kala nearly makes Arular seem tame in comparison, magnifying most of its predecessor's qualities as it remains bracingly adventurous. While it certainly sounds like a second M.I.A. album, nothing about it is stagnant. Made in piecemeal fashion while located in several countries, Kala involves a few co-producers: U.K. "dirty house" producer Switch is the primary collaborator, while Baltimore club don Blaqstarr, Diplo, and Timbaland assist M.I.A. on one or a couple tracks each. Further variety is added vocally, not only through M.I.A.'s numerous modes, but also through feature spots from Nigerian MC Afrikan Boy and a crew of young Aborigine rappers. Roughly half the album -- including the opening three-track sequence, which incorporates Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner," samples from two Tamil-language film soundtracks, squawking chickens, (what sounds like) yelping children, and clustered rhythmic devices that boom, stab, clap, rattle, twitter, and sometimes even prance -- is more intense than anything on Arular. The tracks are so full of chaos and jagged noise that it is disarming to reach the relatively relaxed material, especially the two tracks that resemble actual songs. "Jimmy" is a rather faithful cover, willfully chintzy strings and all, of a flirtatiously lovelorn neo-disco number from the '80s Bollywood film Disco Dancer. "Paper Planes" has a sing-songy float to it, aided by the Clash's "Straight to Hell," though it also appropriates Wreckx-N-Effect's "Rump Shaker" while replacing "zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom" and "boom-boom" with sounds from shotguns and cash registers. Like the remRolling Stone (p.65) - 4.5 stars out of 5 -- "It's heavier, noisier, more jagged....KALA strikes deep....A riot of human, musical and mechanical sounds bubbles underneath these tracks."
Rolling Stone (p.107) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Top Albums of the Year 2007" -- "M.I.A.'s second album was an international block party with a sonic imagination nobody could match all year."
Spin (p.127) - 4.5 stars out of 5 -- "M.I.A.'s border-crossing dance pop is a revolutionary manifesto set the victory party vibe of the future."
Entertainment Weekly (p.133) - "KALA is propelled by genuinely stellar moments: the manic thrall of 'Jimmy,' the ferocious gunshot-chorused 'Paper Planes.'" -- Grade: B
Uncut (p.87) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] head-spinning equatorial dash....She twangs the boundaries of taste both lyrically and musically. But a knockout's a knockout..."
The Wire (p.57) - "She has kept her globetrotting spirit intact in later years -- for Kala she's harvested inspiration and sounds from streets on every continent."
The Wire (p.37) - Ranked #8 in The Wire's "Top Ten Records of the Year 2007" -- "[The] album saw her in transcontinental globetrotting mode in search of the tribal beats, engine sounds and local pop samples mishmashed into KALA."
Q (Magazine) (p.76) - Ranked #34 in Q's "The 50 Best Albums Of 2007" -- "[H]ip hop by way of Africa, the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent..."