Try this trick and spin it

ABX - Blue M.I.A. Day
I thought I hated mashups. Even the especially good ones only seem worth listening to a couple of times. There's a novelty factor to these that is interesting for a short period but often an exercise in gimmickery or mad DJ skillz. And that's cool, I mean, it's important; having a sense of humour and cheekily reworking music from the past and present. It's just that it's rare that one actually works as well as it should. The Grey Album was stupid. Did anyone else not like this? actually, probably lots considering the foreseeable audacity of appropriating The Beatles into a rap context. Maybe I'm just not a fan of Dangermouse, stylistically, even if the two musicians being mashed are terrific.

Anyway, a while ago here on RQ I was directed to a mysterious remixer by the name of ABX who combined Black Rob and Panda Bear to ridiculously good effect. If the point of a remix is to make a song new (putting yr own spin on it) or to further the original ideas into something better then putting two artists side by side would have similar reasons and effects. M.I.A. vs New Order is amazing, shiver-sending, mostly because both of the two songs are already amazing and the peaks and climaxes of each ride over top of eachother and double up. I want to learn how to mash things, too.

Like the other ABX Panda Bear/Black Rob, 'Blue M.I.A. Day' is from The Hood Internet. Elsewhere on this site is GZA vs Sonic Youth, Clipse vs Catpower, Edan vs Stereolab and M83 vs Rhianna (fuck yes!). I guess there could be a novelty factor to a lot of these combinations but the main concern is on good songs turning into even better songs.

Also, 'Blue Monday' has been remixed and fucked up in a variety of ways over the years.

Cultural identity matters of colonised societies; the dilemmas of developing a national identity after colonial rule

Fuck you Alhambra Bar and fuck you bouncer on a power trip. The dress code said 'neat and tidy', not 'no shorts', cunt! All I wanted to do was to watch my girlfriend's band and review The Paper Scissors for a magazine that would support this local music and the magazine that was being launched this night and yr venue. Even after I caught a cab home and back and changed from shorts into jeans it was clear this bouncer jerk was getting his jollies from not letting me in. But oh well, you made me angry and this was actually pretty liberating. It made me realise that maybe it isn't the sort of thing that I want to support or even go to anyway, yr pretentious bar with a dress code so hypocritical that yr bouncer who can barely string a sentence together could unsurprisingly not explain. Girls can wear shorts or sandals but boys may not. OKAY! At least this has inspired me; more house shows! Music with substance not just fashion! Wow, what a revelation. Why didn't I think of this before?

It made sense, then, for me to go to Brisbane's Parklife dance music festival a couple of days after this wonderfully unfortunate night at Alhambra at the UV Magazine launch. It was a fun day beginning with a bottle of red wine in my friend's garden, a walk in the sun to the botanical gardens that somehow managed to hold 20,000 (!) fluoro wearing Gold Coast jocks and a bunch of nice people too. One such nice person kindly slipped a little "THESE ARE REALLY STRONG!!!'. He was right. It was a lot of fun stumbling about in a sea of fluoro not knowing what exactly all this music was or what I was doing here or why I was having so much fun. One of the highlights was eating one fried 'chicken finger' and taking 10 minutes to chew and swallow it. Dancing ridiculously in a goog-induced frenzy to some French popster called Yelle was great but I had a much better time stumbling upon friends and making dirt angels in grassy dirt with them. Then, the reason for it all: M.I.A.



OH SHIT. This was so much more amazing than I had thought. The crowd was reasonably small for her performance because dance giants Justice were playing at the same time. Wearing a Romance Was Born sparkly sweater with gnashy white teeth attached she had the audience reeling in the whole package that she's so carefully put together. She pulled about 20 girls up on stage to dance up there with her.Hyper-coloured projections of dangerous and militant images as well as those more purely feminist, there's a strange and necessary aggression behind her pop. Those baile funk horns of 'XR2', sheesh. It's a weird contrast, really; political activism meets Kylie Minogue-esque pop performance. It seems so carefully put together, so cleverly engineered but for mostly the right reasons, not just pop success. I think? There's certainly a level of commodification, of politics being 'cool'. Even if it is heavy-handed, it's infinitely good if she can stimulate discussion amongst the type of presumably non-politically engaged wide-pupiled Parklife goer.

A hip flask, Caberet Voltaire, Jamesons, three people perching on tree branches, Panther, one Sharpie keyring, wild dance movez, the jungle

M.I.A. - Paper Planes
It's taken me a couple of listens to realize that the new M.I.A. album Kala is, in fact, AMAZING; more than I could imagine. The only hard part is, which song to post here? The second half of the record is stunning, filled with serene vocals and synths and terror and gunshots and bombs and POP; I feel like I could write at least 2500 words about M.I.A. and postcolonialism, I remember talking to my postcolonial literature lecturer about M.I.A. and how that course (that also looked at Salman Rushdie, Charles Johnson, C.L.R. James, Jamaica Kincaid, a lot of other African writing) should look at her. I think the politics at work are interesting and complex and worth delving into, here's probably not the best place mind you.

I've just been reading some reviews across the internet and unlike my first perceptions (THIS IS SO IN MY TOP FIVE OF 2007) a few site's have slammed it (CokeMachineGlow). Is it a polarizing record? Is it really confronting? She is definitley doing something, you can hear it, she wants to shake something up; this is a good thing, it's neccesary, and it's terrific that she's managed to combine this with some KILLER jams. It's true, there are a few duds on Kala but when it works ('$20', 'XR2', 'Paper Planes') oh shit; seriously. Mind blowing, shiver-sending. 'Paper Planes' (download link above) is my favourite but the more I listen to it the more I realise it's pretty heavy-handed It's a risky idea, those gun samples; it works, maybe because it's heavy-handed; super-violent samples atop beautiful (so pretty) - singing.



There's an interesting interview up at Pitchfork that I wish went into more depth.

Stylus has a good review, too.

She's got what must be the best stylist in music today as well! It helps.