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Track Listings
| 1. Bamboo Banga |
| 2. BirdFlu |
| 3. Boyz |
| 4. Jimmy |
| 5. Hussel (featuring Afrikan Boy) |
| 6. Mango Pickle Down River |
| 7. (with the Wilcannia Mob) |
| 8. 20 Dollar |
| 9. World Town |
| 10. The Turn |
| 11. XR2 |
| 12. Paper Planes |
| 13. (with the Wilcannia Mob) |
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The desire to seek culture and tradition from outside one’s own backyard to influence your art and music is nothing new--from The Beatles through Marc Bolan, Paul Simon and up to Damon Albarn with his Mali Music, evidence is rife even in the mainstream. The only problem for M.I.A (aka London born Maya Arulpragasam) is that her backyard was flung far and wide in the first instance, growing up as she did in the UK, India and Sri Lanka--which may go some way to explaining the bewildering, fragrant, intoxicating mesh of sounds, rhythms and head-on sonic clashes that surge willfully throughout her second album, Kala--the result of her own personal voyage of artistic discovery. She’s absorbed, in addition to her own eclectic electro beginnings, aboriginal hip-hop, Jamaican dancehall, Liberian and Trinidadian influences, also finding the time to work with Timbaland (not nearly, incidentally, the highlight of the record). On "Mango Pickle Down River" she sounds like Missy Elliot shuffling in a didgeridoo with a rapping children’s choir she picked up somewhere en route, while the fittingly titled "World Town" is grime arriving on an asteroid during a tribal ceremony with sound effects ranging from a cocked gun to apparent digitized bagpipes. Considering how out-of-this-world-original M.I.A’s Mercury-nominated debut Arular was it is a rare delight that she’s progressed with such resolute surefootedness, losing none of her intrigue. You’ve got a lot of miles to cover to catch her up, let’s put it that way. --James Berry
Review
Born in Hounslow, raised in her family home of Sri Lanka, and then on the run in India, Mathangi 'Maya' Arulpragasam's music is as variegated as would be expected. It's mostly coming from London and The Bronx, but there are still liberal samplings of Eastern ethnic music, both purist and populist. M.I.A. (which sometimes stands for Missing In Action) is very influenced by her Tamil father's militant past in Sri Lanka, and this uppity vibration is injected into her music, in both serious and comic ways. Maya's also a painter and graffiti artist. Look at her website through sunglasses!
This disc was mostly recorded in Chennai, India, and it shows. M.I.A. was holed up in a Bollywood studio, and so she was doubtless free to sample real live players, with an emphasis on booming dhol drummers. The whole album is churning with diced-up audio debris, Maya rapping sullenly and dangerously across a remarkably kinetic soundstage. She's got the tone just right, between hardcore political critique and gleefully stupid wordplay. She's nimble in delivery, and in the penning of the lines themselves.
The opening "Bamboo Banga" tightens the knot with poised tension, constricting as its pulsing beats build, hinting at Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner", and full of her usual self-referencing lyrics. The layers mount up, with a freaky new element introduced at 20 second intervals. "Bird Flu" is packed with deranged chorus vocals, packing a savage punch. The single "Boyz" comes over like a crazed adult nursery rhyme, then she cuts to Indo-Japanese disco cheese (in a reggae stylee) for "Jimmy", a cover of an actual 1982 Bollywood movie number. Fancy some Algerian rai synth worms? "Hussel" has plenty. Meanwhile, the pretty unique "Mango Pickle Down River" mixes Aboriginal didgeridu with early Public Enemy, complete with manic child rapping. Sometimes, the album sound is snipped down to one or two elements, at others, it's milling with a mashed-up sample smörgåsbord. With this second album, M.I.A. is moving at a startling rate... --Martin Longley
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
nearly three years on from her wild debut album Arular (and her mixtape with Diplo) M.I.A. has, with Kala, proven that she is an artist of great creativity and substance. With these new songs she has created an equally provocative record as her debut, if not more so, as this album melds more styles together in more unusual ways. Opener Bamboo Banga sets the scene and has the listener hooked as soon as the pulsing ragga rhythms take hold. "M.I.A. is coming back with POWER POWER!" she chants, over a tinny bollywood sample, and she is certainly right. The next track is Bird Flu, a song I liked but didn't quite know what to make of when it first dropped several months ago over the internet, but in the context of the album it makes alot more sense and segues well into Switch produced BOYZ, her current single, which is surely one of her best tracks and an absolutely huge stomping piece of work. 'Jimmy' is a cover of a classic Bollywood tune from Disco Dancer and adds a touch of tongue in cheek light heartedness to all the thumping clanging beats and viscerally eclectic instrumentation. As the album progresses the scope becomes yet wider, with didgeridoo-based raps(Mango Pickle Down River featuring the Wilcannia Mob, whose rapping is delightful, resulting in a playful collaboration), dub-step influenced mash-ups of classic rock tunes ('blue monday' meets 'where is my mind' both go together into a dark and intense melting pot to create 20 Dollar), stabbing synths and rolling rhythms (XR2) and her trademark political poetry. Further collaborations are with Afrikan Boy (raucous synthplosion 'Hussel') and Timbaland (the sleek album closer 'Come Around) add yet more diverse influences to an already busy album, yet it never gets too much. The best track is without doubt the anthemic soaring Paper Planes, a satirical look at the arms trade, yet also a banging hip-hop tune (quite literally)
Everything flies together well, although it is all a little overwhelming at first and may take a few listens to all fall into place, given the scope and eclecticism. It's not quite as ground breaking at first as Arular, but then again, that's a tough act to follow. And you soon realize that it is just as impressive an album but in different ways. Maya Arulpragasam has obviously honed her talent, rising triumphantly above hype proving herself as a true artist with a developed style that sounds like so many different influences at once yet defiantly her own. The album is a new direction yet still has the in-your-face audacity and vibrancy she has become famous for, experimental without being detrimental, this is a seriously cool tropical roller coaster of psychedelic sound.
Everything flies together well, although it is all a little overwhelming at first and may take a few listens to all fall into place, given the scope and eclecticism. It's not quite as ground breaking at first as Arular, but then again, that's a tough act to follow. And you soon realize that it is just as impressive an album but in different ways. Maya Arulpragasam has obviously honed her talent, rising triumphantly above hype proving herself as a true artist with a developed style that sounds like so many different influences at once yet defiantly her own. The album is a new direction yet still has the in-your-face audacity and vibrancy she has become famous for, experimental without being detrimental, this is a seriously cool tropical roller coaster of psychedelic sound.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
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.
"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.
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
What can you say about m.i.a? she's so unique and original, it's really refreshing to hear music like that, with real meaning. This album is unlike any other album I own, it almost creates its own genre; not quite hip hop, not quite electronic but somewhere in between. It's a shame she's not as popular and well known as she deserves to be, but then it's like having this artist as your own musical secret, the music might get ruined if she became too mainstream. Skip straight to 'paper planes', a musical masterpiece, you'll love it!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Spice
If you're life is unreasonably dull as mine is you will enjoy this album. Dreadfully packaged in some day-glo colour scheme, Kala spices up your world in a way Geri Halliwell... Read more
Published 2 months ago by D. Smith
Just, very nearly as good as Arular
If somebody ever asked me what my favourite album by a solo artist was, the answer would be M.I.A.'s previous album Arular. Read more
Published 5 months ago by DDGH
Love Paper Planes - forgte the rest
Yus I bought this cd because I heard the Paper Planes song and then meticulously searched for the artist through the internet. Read more
Published on 6 Feb 2010 by N. PATERSON
JUST BUY IT!
I ummed and ahhed about buying this cd for months and I have to say now that I own it I can't listen to it often enough. Read more
Published on 19 May 2009 by A. J. West
Fish
This album is a cross between the Ting Tings and Bangla Beat but strangely it works well and produces a unique sound. Read more
Published on 15 May 2009 by Mr. M. Emmerson-fish
M.I.A. Comin' Back with Powa Powa!
I'll be completely honest. I feel ashamed to admit that I had never heard of M.I.A. until I went to see Slumdog Millionaire at the cinema last month. Read more
Published on 9 April 2009 by Michael Elder
It's a Bamboo Banga
After 'Arular' being an unexpected album of my year when it was released, I wasn't sure I would enjoy her second album but after listening to the excellent single 'Paper Planes'... Read more
Published on 17 Jan 2009 by Unreal1066
A MASTERPIECE
It's not often that i can embrace an album of such diversity as this so whole-heartedly as i have come to do with this,M.I.A's second album,Kala. Read more
Published on 5 Jan 2009 by Patroller1
I hope M.I.A stay that way
I have been listening to this CD because my housemate has bought and forced it into my ears through the living room speakers. This isn't music that should be handled in this way. Read more
Published on 27 Dec 2008 by Mr. Thomas Page
Crazy Lady!!!!!
Wow................this is one of my favourite albums of all time. I first heard "Jimmy" on the radio and that was the first time i heard the work of M.I.A. Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2008 by Mr. Marc Macinnes
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