MIA

LOL

hey, mia (trapez, loads others i expect) is djing at my local discotheque on saturday. anyone know what to expect from her?
― nebbesh (nebbesh), Thursday, January 29, 2004 8:00 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no, but you you should go and report back to this thread! m.i.a tracks = niceness.
― tricky disco (disco stu), Thursday, January 29, 2004 9:57 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you mean mia from germany?
― k (blue), Thursday, January 29, 2004 10:25 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, mia from germany, did she do that 'tied to the 80s' track, i used to dance in my bedroom to that. i wasn't sure how deep/minimal/thoughtful she'd play it, i want to bring friends with and don't want them all to stare at me balefully.
she must be doing some dates in london too i expect.

― nebbesh (nebbesh), Thursday, January 29, 2004 10:38 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol Lex, I have been tirelessly bumping the REAL M.I.A. thread and you're posting over here!

Dan = King Canute

forks going "shrug" when i called him out on bumping the wrong thread seriously made me more angry than any other ilx post in a good two years

dan as a mod i think you should effect some sort of c/p or locking thing on these threads!

I'm looking forward to hearing this on account of I like the two songs I've heard a lot and the tone of most of the slagging off makes it sound like it just might be right up my alley.

it's streamable via her Myspace page

the middle sags but I love the beginning and the end

"Fluxblog is the very first MP3 Blog. It was founded by me, Matthew Perpetua, in 2002."

BS. Dude missed being the 'first' by at 5 years. Plus, there were regularly updated RealAudio-hosting sites before Winamp/MP3s came out in '97.

Clearly Maya doesn't even merit its own thread, oh how the mighty have fallen.

dan, i think you should copy and paste all posts, from across ilx, about the "wrong" m.i.a. into the thread about the "right" m.i.a.

done and done

I tried to start a Maya thread but the system wouldn't let me. And the mods said I was too early. And now I'm too late. Ain't that always the way?

wait, who said you were too early?

I tried to start a Maya thread but the system wouldn't let me.

waaaaht

I can't remember - it's somewhere on this thread I think. I was getting tired of all the NYT talk and wanted somewhere to discuss the music but someone said there was no point starting an album thread until it was out/leaked, and I could sort of see their point. Then I forgot all about it. I sort of assumed someone else would start one anyway.

On reflection, it was probably the CIA.

Google? The government?

xp my friend wz telling me about how the CIA had developed Facebook and using it to create lengthy psych profiles on people...he's not really someone who would not be reading MIA write-ups in the NYT Magazine...I mean he's kind of a conspiracy theorist...I mean what's up? All wingnuts think alike? Or is there something to it but it keeps getting mangled??

Conspiracy theories circulate - it's not as if MIA made this one up on her lonesome.

kinda half liked "born free" (mostly due to liking "ghost rider"), hated "xxxo" or whatever the next track was called. interest in hearing the whole album is currently pretty low. i mean, there's gotta be someone here who loves it and can explain why, right?

nah

Most of it sounds like she found a copy of Skinny Puppy's VIVISECT VI and started chanting over it, which I find to be awesome.

^really? that DOES sound awesome!

I'll repeat: It's streaming on her Myspace page

yeah my internet access is pretty limited right now for various reasons...

not to get all 'in my world of young ppl' but c'mon dude. she may not be lady gaga but she's pretty famous/popular.

― some dude, Monday, July 12, 2010 2:37 PM (6 hours ago) Bookm

??? im not sure what was weird abt that phrase! it basically just means 'anecdotal ppl in their 20s i know'??

― blap...tremendo (deej), Monday, July 12, 2010 10:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hey i go through the same thing of trying to relate anecdotal IRL experiences to the blogosphere shut-ins on ILM all the time and i sympathize with your own efforts, but the turn of phrase "in my world of young ppl" is just hilarious to me sorry

'in my world of aging drug addicts'

'in my world of staggered deadbeats'

(this is fun)

Most of it sounds like she found a copy of Skinny Puppy's VIVISECT VI and started chanting over it, which I find to be awesome.

okay, sold

be warned though that if you hated "Teqkilla", you will hate most of the album (or conversely maybe the album will make "Teqkilla" make more sense, I dunno)

noz had a bunch of angry tweets about this album like "i heard this album sounded like skinny puppy, THEY LIED TO ME"

Listening to it now via MySpace. It's loud, ugly and stupid. I like the air-gun sample; reminds me of "Stainless Steel Providers" by Revolting Cocks. I think this will almost certainly wind up being my favorite of her albums, but that's saying so, so little.

What songs do ppl consider loud? I only hear 4 excessively loud tracks on an album of 16 songs.

'in my world of staggered deadbeats'

Totally fun.

She's doing "Born Free" on Letterman right now, in the middle of a bunch of look-alikes and I think Martin Rev is on the keyboards.

Enjoying Christgau's review a lot. Good to see someone overtly irritated by the priggishness and disingenuousness of so many of MIA's critics. The more I read why certain people don't like her, the more I like her.

http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Rock-Roll/Illygirl-Steppin-Up/ba-p/2907

Going back to the record yet again, I find that if I start with Story to Be Told then it's a great 25 minutes. Everything that really bothers me, both sonically and lyrically, is at the front of the album. Even just removing Teqkilla makes it significantly better. I don't understand why it's being painted - by people here as well as by Perpetua - as a complete disaster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MROxPK18v5I

As one of the commenters points out, there's an audible audience cry of "What the fuck was that?" at 4:16. Which is exactly the kind of reaction I'd imagine she was after.

listening for the 1st time, and speaking for people w shitty taste in music, it doesn't seem anywhere near as bad as has been made out. intro track ("the message") clearly sets /\/\/\Y/\ up as some kind of all-caps statement, and i'm okay with that. "steppin up" literalizes the idea with a wall of industrial noise that quickly subsides into a spare & self-aggrandizing banger of the sort she's been kicking out since day one, only festooned here with a more deliberately noisy brand of noise. works for me. the drills and processed guitars make as much musical sense as the gunshots and snare hits of yore, and i love the massive jungle bass that drops in occasionally to soften the architecture.

turns out that "xxxo" has grown on me in the last few weeks, and that it works WAY better in album context than it ever did as a single (as someone remarked a while back). in the flow of the album, there's the implication that the "you" who wants maya to be someone she ain't = the pop costume "xxxo" wears, relative to the preceding bombardations. represents perhaps the idea that she's a pop star in general, a commercial object to be made and sold to sheeps by google government demon corporations, or, i dunno, lemurian overloards or something. and then there's "teqkilla". i can totally see why this would be the last straw for a lot of otherwise indulgent ilxors. it's insanely, pitilessly aggravating. but again, i at least half like it. i at least respect the gesture... the jittery junkshop swing is appealing, and i like the palette of leaky robot noises. with the exception, maybe, of that weaponized "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" thing that knifes out through the chorus. and shit, it's at least two minutes too long, after which lovealot's brief and subdued political ramblings feel like a wound-out afterthought.

but maybe it's best to view all five of these opening tracks as an intro of sorts, or an EP that happens to precede the album proper (which is more-or-less what dorianlynskey just said - i steal all my good ideas). after an initial fusillade of brickbats, /\/\/\Y/\ settles into a brief string of catchy, hazy tracks that go down much easier than what came before. "story to be told" jams along in fine, smoked-out xtrmntr style, "it takes a muscle" is lovely cod reggae pop, and "it iz what it iz" reminds me, obliquely, of PJ harvey's stories from the city stories from the sea, and/or the more subdued yeah yeah yeahs tracks from their last couple albums. maybe maya's not operating at "paper planes" level here, but once it's blown the iron filings out of its nose, this turns out to be a surprisingly appealing album.

and back to "born free". starting to seriously respect the pacing and structure of this album. this track was just kinda WTF cool as a single, but here it makes perfect sense, clearing the air and focusing the raw noise of the album's forward end into a sleek, pulverizing beast that doesn't sound gratuitously noisy in the slightest. following which "meds & feds" revels gloriously in the purely gratuitous, reanimates the zombie pixies, gives a damn (alegedly), makes of the central riff something wonderful that sounds nothing like sleigh bells.

i'll quit, but dammit, this is a fascinating and well-constructed landscape of a album (a trip, as the hill people used to say). i haven't spent any real time with it, so as excitingly complex as it seems in the moment, it may ultimately reveal less than it seems to promise. i dunno. and as pop/dance music it's clearly offering kala and arular a shred of competing, but taken on its own merits as a stand-alone offering, it's both interesting and immediately appealing. you know, on the first/second pass...

P.S. the three "bonus tracks" are much, much better than the tracks that close the official album. surprised that "tell me why", "space" and "internet connection" didn't get cut, saved for b-sides, whatever.

umm

...as pop/dance music it's clearly not offering kala and arular a shred of competition...

okay, retract the passing diss of "space". "space" is great. but damn, those last 3 "bonus tracks" smoke - esp, as cgau notes, illygirl. would love to hear the album arranged around this track.

Xgau, once again a sucker for facile and inchoate politics. Why he does't dismiss M.I.A.'s "art rock" move is a mystery, as there have been plenty of artists less full of shit than her who don't get a pass. Surprisingly patronizing piece by him, too, seeing as it considers her critics "idiots" who bristle at an artist that "dares suggest listeners introduce their overtaxed brain cells to world issues." I mean, fuck you?

Speaking of fuck you, that Letterman performance is great, though.

hahaha that Letterman performance! awesome

yeah man, that performance was amazing. Martin Rev in the house! Who was playing drums?

pretty good performance of a still essentially boring song, though i don't get what was so wtf about it unless letterman's never had any rock group use distortion on his show before (and smh @ the indie feedback at the end, why are people still doing this). not as fun as nicki'n'thicki's letterman performance.

i liked the lookalikes tho!

oh and i didn't read the xgau review past him calling her detractors idiots, josh's summation of it indicates this was a good idea. how ignorant does one have to be if you're being introduced to "world issues" (which is a nonsensical phrase anyway) by maya arulpragasam. what world issues does she introduce people to. GOD.

sounds like martin rev should have produced her shit instead of rusko or whoever. that was pretty tyt

um Lex, you are acting like the majority of the world isn't vacuous and self-involved

"Happy Halloween!"

surfboard otm

yeah man, that performance was amazing. Martin Rev in the house! Who was playing drums?

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, July 14, 2010 8:52 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

looks like it could have been Butchy Fuego of Chicago band Pit Er Pat, I know he's played drums for her recently.

Love the performance, love the socks.