Kala

Simply the most innovative artist out there! Kala makes me feel cool and worldly and when I find a CD that makes me "feel" a certain way, I know it is gonna be big. I LOVE music of all kinds but usually tend to stick with contemporary folk because that seems to be the only genre that has had the nerve to break away from the MTV scene (i.e. quality of music based on how somone looks rather than talent). Over the past couple of months though I have been getting into "house music" more and more since there are so many new things being done within that realm. When I heard "Bamboo Banga" I knew this was something not only "new" but way ahead of it's time. I was NOT dissapointed when I heard the whole CD and now I cannot stop listening to it. Her voice is mesmerizing. Thank god an artist has come along that can breath some much needed diversity and attitude into popular music.

Glistens like the new Cibo Mato ("Paper Planes" = "Clouds") but, with agro ideology and sonic recklessness, hits more like the new PiL ("Bird Flu" = "Pied Piper"). Laptop grunge, exotica hiphop, bayonet beats, bipolar samples, schizophrenic squarewaves with menacing messages - rave agitprop. Imbricated din. Download, at once, "Bamboo Banger,""Boyz," "XR2" and "$20." If Arular was Devo, Kala is the Slits; less funk, more flange - "MIA coming back with power, power" - dangerous nursery rhymes, communist disco. Mathangi Arulpragasam is Tania set to OCD bpm. Up against the wall, bourgeois!

...M.I.A. produced Arular herself!! Diplo only co-produced Bucky Done Gun...the rest of the tracks are Maya's!

Off-topic digression aside, Kala is an excellent album. Go buy it now!

How cool is this? They clearly do things a bit differently over there in Sri Lanka. (Yes, I know she's UK-based at this point.)

This is one of the oddest albums I've heard in many months, and exhilaratingly so. What with the electronic mayhem, mad tribal drumming, and political fury, it reminds me of nothing so much as the classic "Bonk" by the Australian band Big Pig -- but fed through a blender and amped up for a weirder and more dangerous millennium. "I'm knocking on the doors of your Hummer, Hummer"...you hear that, Gov. Schwarzenegger? I think she's coming for you.

Tori Amos, Imogen Heap, and Vienna Teng officially have a new rival for my fanboy affections. (I'm sure they're in great distress.)

M.I.A.'s first album "Arular" hypnotized me with incredible lyrics and outstanding beats, so I was beyond excited when I found out in a magazine that she was coming out with her sophomore album "Kala" over the summer. The day it came out, I dragged my mother to the music store near my aunt's house in Oregon and instantly bought it, and what an outstanding buy it was!

This album combines a mix of dance, electro-pop, techno, rock, hip-hop and reggae into one. Each song is combined with free-dance songs (Boyz) to slow, mellow, easy-listening songs (Paper Planes, The Turn) to club beats (XR2, Bird Flu) to a mix of every genre I think I've ever heard of.

Her voice is incredible, and this album is better than any album I have ever owned. It is better than the popular stuff people today are listening to. If you want something different and fun, this album is for you.

This is a must-buy! Incredible beats, incredible lyrics, incredible songs, incredible singer, incredible ALBUM!!! It's all incredible! You won't be disappointed with the result of this CD.