Posted by Budgie at April 26, 2005 03:41 PM

"Quieten Down / I Need To Make A Sound"

I suppose it was inevitable that a proper M.I.A post would appear up on The Pipe sooner than later...

My love for M.I.A's music is well known. I'll tell anyone who'll listen to go and buy her debut album "Arular". It's chock full of Old Skool Hip Hop beats, Jamaican Dancehall rhythms, Brazillian Baile Funk and then topped with her curious mix of school yard and sometimes political rhymes. It is an incendiary and fresh mix that blasts out of your speakers.

Prior to the album coming out, M.I.A and her boyfriend Diplo put out a mix tape called "Piracy Funds Terrorism". It was more or less a sampler for "Arular" but constructed around your typical hip hop mix tape. So you'd get bits of her tracks merging over different and more well known beats with plenty of surprises. For example "Sunshowers" is performed over Salt N Pepa's "Push It" and "10 Dollar" is backed by The Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams".

XL Recordings, the label M.I.A has signed to, is currently paying homage to "Piracy Funds Terrorism" by hosting an Online Mix Tape for anyone to submit their own reworkings of the M.I.A material that they have provided. There are 3 tracks available, "Bucky Done Gun", "URAQT" and "Pull Up The People".

So if you fancy it, then click on the link to XL Recordings at the bottom of the page and have a go...

Track : M.I.A - "URAQT (SIE REMIX)"

House Of Cuss' very own Sie did just that. The beauty here is that Sie had never heard an M.I.A track before and thought it would be a challenge to see what he could produce just by listening to the acapella.

And he has thrown a curve ball.

Out goes any hint of Hip Hop and in comes a thumping big Euro House track. So big synth lines replace the originals honking horn sample and M.I.A's lyrical warning to the girl who is texting her man is being bounced about the track atop a huge big wobbly bassline. For fans of Sie's work, you won't be disappointed as he even lobs in a couple of his trademark breakdowns for good measure.

Good work fella!

Track : KING OF PANTS - "BUCKY DONE GONE ELECTRO" (M.I.A Vs LITTLE COMPUTER PEOPLE)

I spotted this over on GYBO last week and loved it. Featuring another of the acapellas from XL, Seattle's DJ Freddy - King Of Pants, takes "Bucky Done Gun" and mashes it over "Electro Pop" by Little Computer People. I'll put my hand up and say that it's a song that I'm not familiar with, but this is a brilliant mix, what with its big Arthur Baker / Afrika Bambaataa style beats, vocoder vocals, buzzing synths and all in a quite similar, but tougher, vein than the M.I.A original version. More importantly, don't let his name fool you, it's not pants...

Track : M.I.A / XEROX SOUNDSYSTEM - "GALANGROX (XEROX RE-RUB)"
Track : M.I.A / XEROX SOUNDSYSTEM - "HOMBRE (XEROX RE-TUG)"

These 2 were also spotted over on GYBO. Xerox are, according to their website, "a 2 man DJ / Production team aiming to celebrate the unoriginal in the most modern and entertaining way possible". I'm definately celebrating these 2 M.I.A reworks.

"Galang" is probably M.I.A's most well known track and on "Galangrox" Xerox paste her vocals over a variety of beats, including the infamous break from Public Enemy's "Security Of The First World".

"Hombre" on the other hand goes for a hand clapped rhythm punctuated with a nice dark, deep bass and the occassional burst of effects. A perfect backing to M.I.A's war cry like chorus.

Track : CIARA feat. M.I.A - "GOODIES (RICHARD X MIX)"

Seeing as it's M.I.A overload today, I couldn't let this one pass you by. It's Richard X's excellent remix of Ciara's crunk track "Goodies" from earlier in the year. It's a lot darker, and better than the original and made even more so by the appearance of M.I.A.

It's pretty cool as there seems to be a "Degrees Of Seperation" thing going on with it all. You have Richard X, who helped produce M.I.A's "Arular" album, remixing Ciara's "Goodies" and having M.I.A doing her thing amongst it all and in return the original backing track of "Goodies" appears on M.I.A and Diplo's "Piracy Funds Terrorism" with M.I.A singing her "Amazon" track over the top of it.

Go Buy : M.I.A - Arular
Go Buy : Ciara - Goodies CD Single

Go Visit : XL Recordings
Go Visit : M.I.A
Go Visit : Ciara
Go Visit : Richard X
Go Visit : Xerox Soundsystem
Go Visit : DJ Freddy, King Of Pants

Feel free to leave a comment about these tracks in The Pipe section of the forum

Ta,
Budgie.