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030910
War of the words
Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam – aka MIA – is back with her most daring record to date
Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam cops a lot of flak for inconsistency. She's the designer-clad international party girl but the voice of the third world, the conspiracy theorist revolutionary engaged to the son of the CEO of Warner Music, the champion of cutting-edge beats and global sounds who used to be a fixture on the Britpop scene. Her third album proves that however contradictory she is as a person, her aesthetic is coherent though packed with influences and guest producers (Rusko, Switch, Diplo, Blaqstarr), it’s entirely Maya's sound.
The electro-punk thrash of Suicide-sampling single 'Born Free' was misleading: for the most part 'MAYA' is based on the same collision of clattering percussion, dancehall rhythms and chanted vocals that first got dances going when 'Galang' and 'Sunshower’ appeared in 2004. It's not samey, mind – it’s grimier, rawer and odder than ever, and from the squealing bleeps of the dementedly driving “Teqkilla” to the Bollywood acid dubstep of “Story To Be Told”, Rusko's cut-ups of screeching saws and metal guitars on 'Steppin' Up' to his ragged fever-dream dubscape on the closing 'Space', it’s a constant stream of fresh disorientation. The lyrics leap from bomb-blasts to Twitter, government surveillance to Quentin Tarantino, piling on images and associations of a hyper-connected information overload world into a collision of rap swagger, playground txt spk and political ranting. At times it’s hard to tell if MIA is trying to make any sense of it all, or just scooping up any image that will get her noticed; either way she's created a dizzying soundsystem thrill-ride of an album, a batshit-mental sonic portrait of a world in flux.
