M.I.A.: /\/\ /\ Y /\ (Boston Phoenix, 7/8/10)

M.I.A. is predictably unpredictable — whether it’s the Diplo-assisted baile funk of her debut, 2005′s Arular, or the demented low-budget world beat of ’07′s Kala, her sonic plan has always been to hit it and quit it. She flirted with pop fame/infamy with the left-field success of Kala‘s “Paper Planes.” But anyone digging into Maya (or /\/\ /\ Y /\, as it’s being promoted) expecting club-banging pop hits will be . . . not disappointed, but definitely confused. Yes, there are buoyant moments of transcendence, like the effervescent “XXXO” and the reggae-tinged “Tell Me Why,” with its yearning lilt. But twixt those two tent poles, there’s a whole lot of weirdness, and pop fans will likely be left scratching their heads through confusing tweakfests like “Teqkilla” and the metal-tinged “Meds and Feds.” Of course, if you come to M.I.A.’s third album expecting light sing-songy jams, then you get what you deserve. She’s always known her way around a pop hook — but she also lives to confront, whether in her public image or in the grooves of her records. In Maya‘s case, that means slick dance productions rubbing shoulders with brittle lo-fi distorto jams. “You want me to be somebody who I’m really not” goes the chorus of “XXXO” — and on much of the rest of the album, Ms. Arulpragasam is intent on testing that identity crisis. Meaning that you have songs built on smooth psychedelia (like the closing “Space”), but you also have jams built on the rhythmic pulse of a hand drill (“Steppin’ Up”) or the mean drum sound of the dude from Sepultura (the Lightning Bolt–ish “Born Free”). It’s pulverizing, it’s hip-swaying, it’s disorienting, and it’s atmospheric — in short, it’s primo culture jamming from a restless musical force of nature.

Creators Project NYC: M.I.A., Die Antwoord, Sleigh Bells, Salem (6/26/10, Boston Phoenix)

Like most people who listen to music a lot, I get easily fatigued hearing people verbally hand-wring over the future of music, technology, and the various synergy thereof. But that didn’t stop me from snatching up a free pass to this past weekend’s Vice Magazine/Intel blowout, held at the Meatpacking District’s Milk Studios. It seems the idea behind this music-festival-slash-art-gallery-installation-slash-symposium, humbly entitled the Creators Project, was to scour the globe to find the point where human pretentiousness ends and robotic overload begins — and apparently, it all tends to involve neon colors and sweaty people wearing sunglasses indoors. But enough about the audience; making fun of NYC hipsters is a joyless enterprise, and I’d much rather walk you through the joyful parts of this nutty gig.

Wittingly or not, the invite-only event served as a showcase for the solipsism of modern creative culture. Everything at Creators Project seemed to focus on our generation’s relentless need to document ourselves: from the art itself — like the installation piece that allowed you to have your face digitally represented above a Day-Glo pyramid) — to the vast majority of attendees, who were photographing themselves in every possible moment. In a sense, then, the “creative” aspect of the festival had something to do with the way that almost every member of the audience was working on his/her own documenting project at any given time. Was I watching a set, or was I gathering raw footage to be edited later into a representative piece about said set?

As you can probably tell by the previous two paragraphs, I had a good seven hours of navel-gazing before the music started up: standing and spacing out in installations like Mira Calix’s My Secret Heart (an eternal choral loop intertwines with a gigantic 360-degree screen depicting what appears to be human beings slowly transforming into lightning bolts), United Visual Artists’ Triptych (three 2001-ish monoliths emitting light and sound that seem to corrolate with viewers’ physical movements), and especially the trippy-and-overwhelming Muti Randolph piece Deep Screen (is it cliche to point out that being inside this piece is pretty much what it must be like to be inside The Matrix?). It wasn’t until almost sundown that we started hearing the pounding notes of bands like The Rapture and Gang Gang Dance. By this time, the art and the free bar had loosened everyone up enough to the point of incoherence.

It still took a few hours, however, for things to get really nuts. The poorly kept secret of the event was that M.I.A., although not listed on anything official, was going to be the de facto headliner — and anticipation was clearly off the charts. The music line-up was a strange mix of up-and-coming oddities and more dependable modern rock acts that could dependably get people excitable. At no point was this didactic separation more evident than the simultaneous performances of Interpol and Die Antwoord: the former, a straight-laced act performing minimalist anthemic new wave rock, and the latter a spastic and freakish South African rap/rave act who mix the grotesque and the amusing in a confrontational mashup of Afrikaner and English. Neither act was really on the forefront of any kind of technological event horizon — but neither was playing Glastonbury that weekend, and both of them were able to blow the roof off their respective corner of the gallery.

Before I get into Die Antwoord, a word about Sleigh Bells, the band that went on before them. Amid all the high-tech laser shows and talk of creative boundary breaking, it was interesting to see a Sleigh Bells set, because they kind of straddle everything. They are both high-tech and lo-tech, and they are both forward-thinking and just straight-up rocking. Their set-up is borderline-retarded: just a guitar, a vocalist, and an iPod that plays the drums. They have a back-to-basics vibe, but at the same time, it’s hard to deny that vocalist Alexis Krauss is a budding rock diva, with a magnetic and sweaty presence that is both glamorous and unpretentious. Emerging from a haze of strobed-out smoke, guitarist Derek Miller began pounding out the intro to Slayer’s classic “South of Heaven” before the band ripped into their own senses-pounder, “Tell ‘Em.” The way this band mixes up metal, punk, dance, electro, and pop signifiers and sounds is electrifying, especially since they pull it off so effortlessly. Sleigh Bells’ music can fit into so many spaces: they could play the smallest little bar or the largest rock festival, and it probably wouldn’t matter. As they ended their set — drenched in sweat, blasting their final chords over an epilepsy-inducing strobe light — it was clear that a new force in rock has emerged.

I took a sojourn from the second-floor gallery down to the first to check out Salem, a strange three-piece hailing from Traverse City, Michigan. They’re an odd fit for this event, if only because the celebratory nature of the Creators Project is pretty much anathema to the dreary drudge of Salem’s haunting muse. Sounding not unlike Julee Cruise warbling over T-Pain, the band mix crunk beats, gauzy synths, and almost-not-there vocals to a startling effect that’s both disturbing and beautiful. Since this was a Vice-sponsored event, I’ll say here that the band’s look was a quintessential DO: the mismatched clusterfuck of their appearance (you had one guy in a wifebeater and shorts, another wearing a flowing medieval shirt with a plethora of Wiccan-y necklaces, and a woman in high heels and short black dress) was so discordant as to be brilliant, especially when paired with their we-don’t-care attitude. Never saying a word to the audience, they softly pummelled the crowd with gloomy warblings that seemed to come from a dark, indistinct place.

I sauntered back upstairs just in time to catch the debut NYC performance of Die Antwoord, who are definitely one of the stranger acts to ever grace an American stage. A lawless and anarchic rap duo (backed by their DJ, Hi-Tek), one toweringly tall (the intimidating Ninja) and one puzzingly short (the pixie-ish Yo-Landi Vi$er), Die Antwoord blew our face off with boundless energy that in a live setting allows you to forget your nagging suspicions that the whole thing is a put-on. Much ink has been spilled attempting to figure out if the group is a joke act, owing not only to their out-of-nowhere media blitz but also to the sheer weirdness of what they do. What comes across as almost gratingly irritating on record is mind-blowingly exciting live, as Ninja and Yo-Landi proceeded to attack this overcrowded room of hipsters with a ferocity that was both unexpected and refreshingly vicious. They bounced around the stage like they’d been electrocuted, almost defying the laws of gravity. Tracks like “Enter the Ninja” and “Wat Pomp” might sound like some kind of 21st-century Dr. Demento fare when you listen to the MP3s — but in person, they are absolutely blistering. I have a suspicion that novelty of Die Antwoord might actually last a bit longer than some might have guesstimated, now that the actual humans are touring America and proving that they are two of the more capable MC’s at work anywhere.

After Die Antwoord left the stage, the mood in the room heightened, as the anticipation of M.I.A.’s rumored appearance hit fever pitch. Would she show? Would she play more than one song? Would she (ulp) be terrible? Everyone got their iPhone cameras ready and aimed as the lights eventually went out, and a red strobe and a lone drummer started rat-a-tat-tatting in unison, signaling the start of recent single “Born Free.” When the song kicked into its frantic riff, M.I.A. emerged, resplendant in an outfit that could have been purchased from a street vendor around the corner for a few bucks: a camo windbreaker with the hood up and cheapo sunglasses with pot leaves over the eyes that had the strange effect of making her look like a rapping Jawa. Oh, and a rainbow wig that she never removed during her hour-long set. But the off-the-cuff zaniness of her appearance was in stark contrast to the tightness of her flow. In the past, M.I.A. has proven a pretty hit-or-miss performer (as anyone who caught her last Mass. appearance at the Worcester Palladium a few years ago can attest). But clearly with the build-up to her new album (Maya, her third, out in mid-July), she’s gotten her proverbial act together, with a live drummer, a tight DJ, and a flanking squadron of backup singers and dancers, all moving in sync to a precision set that moved seamlessly from new material to older tracks from Kala and Arular without missing a beat. The highlight came near the end, when a spirited run-through of “Galang” ended with an extended shout-through of the song’s coda, a wordless melodic chant that had the entire room yelling in unison. M.I.A. dove into the crowd with her mic; and for a few minutes, her inclusive world-beat-mashing made more sense than anything in the world.

After the set, I found my way back to the My Secret Heart exhibit — now somewhat empty, save for the occasional couple making out in the glow of the installation’s rotating display. As I crashed in the corner and attempted to get my head together for the long train ride back to Boston after the 12-hour metaphysical atom-smashing I had just received, the discombobulating sense of wordless grace that Calix’s installation doled out was meditative in the best sense of the word. Perhaps this is how technology and art can work with real-life music culture: to help spastic music fans to chill before and after the sprawling chaos of live music?

M.I.A.: Live, Creators Project, NYC, 5/26/10 (photos) (Boston Phoenix)

M.I.A.’s “Maya” leaks: the (early) verdict?

Ok, so you have a female artist whose electroclash-y half-rap sing-songs ignited the blogosphere in the mid-00′s; she jets around amongst several continents that she calls home; and after being on the verge of breaking out of the underground, she flamed out a few years ago to have a child, re-group, and now has a new album coming out this month that has leaked early. No, we aren’t talking about UFFIE– whose Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans founds its way onto the blogosphere well in advance of its mid-June release date– but M.I.A., whose new album Maya (we refuse to follow the meme of referring to it as /\/\/\Y/\) hits June 29th but has finally leaked in its entirety.

The verdict? Well, the pop hits that prop the album up could convincingly sell the record to a mainstream audience, but were said audience to ingest the album whole, they would probably find vast stretches between where the plot gets lost amidst more… experimental dance music. Again, still not talking about the new Uffie album, which that entire sentence is also true of! Which I suppose echoes the sentiments of Diplo, Maya’s sometime-producer and somewhat bitter ex, who tweeted last week “just listened to mastr of the MIA album.. WOW.. my 3 trax are slammin! dunno bout the rest”. Yikes! (He also recently posted what looked like a link to a leak of the album– we were not previously familiar with the concept of a Bieber-roll!)

Well, we wouldn’t go that far– but if you were expecting this to be M.I.A.’s move to the mainstream– well, it isn’t, really, even if tracks like “XXXO”, with it’s buoyant pop step, might make you think otherwise. “Tell Me Why” finds Maya actually attempting (and sort of succeeding at) singing, “Meds and Feds” is a scuz-rocker that kinds of sounds like XTRMNTR-era Primal Scream if you quint really hard, and closer “Space” is a gorgeous piece of floating ephemera. But the album is definitely front-loaded with bounce, until the beat-jacking overload is derailed by the 6-1/2 minute “Teqkilla”, a somewhat meandering piece that mixes avant jazz, video game noises, and pitch-shifted mumbling. It’s a cool track that indicates to anyone listening that M.I.A. is, at heart, an exploratory artist who has a natural tendency to reject any suggestions that she should tighten up her game to appease a broader “market”. In a sense, though, the key moment on the album comes early, during the chorus to “XXXO”– as Maya sings “You want me to be somebody who I’m really not”.

Viral video killed the MTV star? The four most shocking music video clips of 2010 (so far) (Boston Phoenix, 4/27/10)

Was it really only a year and a half ago that MTV cancelled TRL?  It seems like a lifetime since that fateful final episode, a whimper that had critics all over sounding the death-knell for the music video. Looks like reports of the video-as-art-form’s demise were greatly exaggerated, since 2010 is shaping up to be the year that music videos matter again.

Now that they’ve been freed from their indentured servitude — promotional clips doled out (and of course censored) by the hip gatekeepers of MTV — today’s music videos can appear out of nowhere, without fanfare, and run longer than a commercial break. This week marked the release of M.I.A.’s long-form diatribe “Born Free” — a gratuitously violent and nasty piece of cinema that, by my count, is the fourth important work of music film to have hit our monitors in the last few months.

Maybe it’s because today’s artists have learned their lessons from video stars of the past: that if you have a grand enough vision, and you are willing to risk scorn and ridicule in the pursuit of spreading your particular gospel, you can still put out a visual statement that will have everyone gabbing at the virtual watercooler for at least a few days of furious tweeting.

EXHIBIT A: Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce, “Telephone”

Arguably the first grand video statement of the year was Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” video with Beyonce — at this point, anyone who had anything to say about Gaga’s gratuitous violence, mayhem, fashion and, er, product placement has already said their peace and then some.  Servers were crashed as fans and casual computer users alike flocked to see what the hubbub was about, and a brief internet meme was created out of the concept of smoking sunglasses. But the surprising thing turned out to be that this video was not going to be the hands-down video event of the year — as shocking as Gaga tried to be, the most outrageous was still yet to come.

EXHIBIT B: Erykah Badu, “Window Seat”

A few weeks ago, noted oddball soul belter Erykah Badu unveiled her “Window Seat” video. If Gaga/Beyonce’s Jonas Akerlund-directed spectacle was a gleeful romp through homicidal lunacy, Badu’s video was notable for its opposing tone, a piece of shrieking agitprop.  As the Dallas native strolls naked through Dealey Plaza, a gunshot sound forces her to the ground at the end, the purple CGI blood emanating from her body forming the word “groupthink”.  The video was filmed in one take with no permits pulled in front of crowds of unsuspecting witnesses, a guerilla filming move that resulted in a disorderly conduct charge being slapped on the singer.  But the $500 fine was, certainly, a pittance compared to the phenomenal free press the video gave to Badu.  She later commented that “my performance art has been grossly misinterpreted by many,” a telling line in that it correctly places the video not in the lexicon of video greats like “White Wedding” and “You Might Think”, but rather amongst the company of the more avant-garde wing of cutting edge performance artists.  The video really reminded me of the work of Andrea Fraser, in particular her piece “Official Welcome”, where she slowly disrobes in the midst of an art awards ceremony.  Standing naked before a shocked audience, she closes with the statement “I’m not a person today.  I’m an object in a work of art.”  Perhaps Badu felt a similar sentiment as she began to sense the misunderstanding in the reception to her thinkpiece?

EXHIBIT C: M.I.A., “Born Free”

If Badu’s video seemed ponderous and self-important, it seems light and airy compared to the NSFW downerfest that is the video for “Born Free”.  The creation of director Romain Gravas, the clip really only makes sense upon a second viewing, when it becomes clear that what we are watching has more in common with the dark sarcasm of Children of Men or “The Twilight Zone” than, say, the searing political film-making of Gravas’ father, the legendary Greek rabblerouser known as Costa-Gravas.  Costa-Gravas made an indelible mark on the world of political film-making with the 1969 true crime assassination thriller Z, a film that investigates the dark netherworld where truth dissipates and political callousness trumps all other human senses. It would be easy to run a straight line between a film like Z and the jarring political sensibility of the “Born Free” clip– except that “Born Free”, unlike Z, does not take place in the real world, and is instead a parable of racial intolerance and fascism with all the subtlety of classic Sterling-era sci-fi.  That isn’t to say that the video lacks a gutteral punch, because it most definitely does; more importantly, it is instantly debatable, and will probably be dividing its viewers on opposing sides from now until, say, the next polarizing event video hits the interwebs.

EXHIBIT Z: Insane Clown Posse, “Miracles”

That said, I still don’t think that “Born Free” will ever generate the pure zeitgeist-tapping shitstorm that met the viral arrival earlier this month of Insane Clown Posse’s “Miracles” video. There really was no inbetween on “Miracles”: you either thought that it was a brilliant game-changer for the normally violence-bathed ICP, or you were a seemingly sensible person who thought that the video was the worst thing ever in the history of things. In many ways, the song and video seem to have been designed to work as a taunt to the non-Juggalo universe, a cuddly and doe-eyed paean to wonder and magic that seems in complete opposition to everything ICP Nation stands for.  Lyrics like “Music is magic/pure and clean/you can feel it and hear it/but it can’t be seen” make it difficult to ascertain the seriousness of the Juggalo charm offensive here — is this tune a smarmy attempt at playing fake nice a la A.C.’s Picnic of Love album — or is this yet another side of the ICP universe that outsiders will never understand, along with the Tolkein-esque mythology behind the duo’s braindead-seeming exterior?  The truth is that it’s both, and neither — it’s probably just as much of a sincere statement of conservative naivete as it is a “fuck you” to critics and non-fans worldwide. Either way, though, the far-reach of this clip means that even non-Juggalos everywhere spent weeks parsing the intent of lines like “Magic everywhere in this bitch” — and you can bet that the masked duo are laughing all the way to the virtual bank.

M.I.A.: “Born Free” (On The Download, Boston Phoenix, 4/23/10)

The first salvo from the M.I.A. camp has finally emerged: after a blimp over Coachella proclaimed the imminent arrival of her as-yet-untitled album (due out on June 29th), we now have a released track which may or may not show up on said album.  If you were expecting a dance-tastic mish-mash of world music styles and hiccup-y rap hooks, then you are… going to be completely thrown by the low-tech scuzz bomb that is “Born Free”.  Some are attempting to contribute the track’s gritty fuzz to the album’s alleged production contribution from out-of-nowhere mega-rockers Sleigh Bells (a recent signee to M.I.A.’s label imprint N.E.E.T.), and some have made note of the “Born Free”‘ writing credits being shared with Suicide’s Martin Rev and Alan Vega: Did they even listen to the track?  Are they familiar with a song called “Ghost Rider” that the track samples heavily for it’s main hook?  I’m going to guess that Mya had about as much personal interaction with Messrs. Rev and Vega as Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock did with Lyn Collins when they made “It Takes Two”.

Aanyway… I’d imagine that anyone who was a fan of M.I.A. back when tracks like “Galang” and “Bucky Done Gone” were blowing up will probably be listening to this to see if she is going to go for the pop jugular after the somewhat unexpected success of “Paper Planes”, the belatedly ubiquitous main jam from Mya’s otherwise relatively oddball 2007 lp Kala.  The verdict?  Well, if you aren’t a fan of M.I.A. at this point, this probably isn’t going to be the track to convert you– but if you can handle her unique voice and phrasing, her gift for dramatic reading and sing-song-y rhyming and wordplay is still in full effect.  ”I don’t need to talk about money/Cuz I got it/And I don’t wanna talk about hoochies/Cuz I been it” is perhaps an indication that this time around she might be addressing some new and different concerns, but it’s kind of hard to tell from this teaser.  Indeed, the word is that this track isn’t necessarily indicative of what the album will sound like at all, and for all we know it may not even wind up on the album– kind of like when the track “Hit That” leaked in advance of Kala in the summer of ’07; what would have been one of the best tracks on that album is now nothing but an untagged mp3 floating in the ether of the interwebs.  But that’s part of why we love M.I.A.– her unpredictability and flair for drama is something the world of music culture desperately needs.

M.I.A.: Kala (Weekly Dig, 8/15/07)

M.I.A.’s debut, Arular, was the quintessential post-9.11 pop album, in that the sexy swagger of post-electroclash diva pop was mixed with elements of Third World anti-war/pro-guerrilla sentiments, with sounds of explosions edging into the beats and vague allusions to the PLO mixing in with otherwise lighthearted fare. In other words, the mood was light but intentionally/unintentionally confused, as though assimilating these things was no big deal. In this sense, Kala is a radical shift: Whereas Arular was recorded in her London bedroom, M.I.A.’s new album was tracked all over the world, and it lends the album a darker, more serious tone. How serious? There’s something about the use of gunshot effects in this record that isn’t played for laughs or empty braggadocio the way it is in, say, an N.W.A. or Biggie tune. And although it was anyone’s guess what the titular “$10″ represented on the Arular track, Kala‘s “$20″ is, as the song goes, “the cost of an AK in Africa.” That particular tune throbs with a bassline lifted from New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a chorus break from the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind.” Oddly enough, the result doesn’t sound like a Pitchfork-reading magpie job so much as the sound of the end of the world, where moments from the world’s pop culture just float by and meet up as odd bedfellows.

GENRE | HOTT ENDTIMES JAMS

VERDICT | BONERS EVERYWHERE RISE IN PROTEST

LABEL | INTERSCOPE

RELEASE | 8.20.07

MIAUK.COM

INTERSCOPE.COM