MIA - 'Arular' (XL) Released 25/04/05

Dance music has found itself in a strange situation of late. The mainstream music press would have you believe that it’s lost its way, yet when you consider the gems we’ve had dropped on us this year you wonder whether they are even listening. Granted Daft Punk dropped a clanger with their latest effort but all signals point to a renaissance. LCD Soundsystem, Fischerspooner and Tom n’ Ed have all produced genuinely life affirming LPs but now its time for the upstarts and Sri Lankan Londoner MIA  seems more than ready to prove there’s not just life, but diversity pulsating in the UK scene.

Born Maya Arulpragasm this is her first studio album after last years ‘Piracy Funds Terrorism’ mixtape and every second on this LP (save the rather irritating opening skit) has all the stealth rudeness of a streaker at a test match. Her aggressive London scattergun style runs amok across the perfectly crafted beats and breaks to frightening effect. ‘Pull Up The People’ starts proceedings properly and is an excellent example of her virtuoso skill. “I’ve got the bombs to make you blow, I’ve got the beats to make you baaaaaaaaaang…”  She spits, and anyone that hears this it’s safe to hear will believe her.

The stuttering electro garage rhythm track has the kind of immediacy that will make anyone, upon first listening, look directly at the speakers from which it’s being played just to make sure they’re okay after taking such a bass driven pounding. Next track ‘Bucky Done Gun’ rocks in all the right places but the cheap synth trumpets will make even the best of us cringe in their inadequacy, the Rocky theme played on an Argos Casio Keyboard, I kid you not. Luckily for MIA and her listeners the next choon ‘Sunshowers’ is the most fun dance music has ever had since a giant talking dog with a broken leg tried to find his way around New York City. Guest vocalist Nesreen Shah’s voice is twisted round steel drums, vocoder style, to create a gorgeous poppy chorus that will cause you to lose sleep with its overtly catchy hook.

The overall production on ‘Arular’ is magnificent with even Richard X getting his grubby mitts on a couple of tracks namely ‘Ten Dollar’ and ‘Amazon’. The former being the best ragga techno bleep frenzy ever written about teenage prostitution you are ever likely to hear. To say ‘Arular’ has six different producers spread across its twelve tracks (and two of these are skits) the quality never veers or appears disjointed. In just forty minutes MIA delivers her own unique world view that will captivate everyone wise enough to hear her out. George Bush gets a deserved bashing on the secret track and there seems to be no subject she won’t touch upon, stretching from poverty to consumerism and Iraq to the bloody drug wars in the UK’s own inner cities.

Missing In Action? No way – MIA has seen all the action and in ‘Arular’ she has an exemplary record to prove it. So the question remains, is dance music dead? Not a chance, its just stunned or at least it will be once this record is released… Blinding.