MIA
MIA must be wondering what’s she got to do to get a break. First there was Truffleflavouredchipsgate. Then the duet with Madonna on ‘Give Me All Your Luvin’’ – where, despite the involvement of two of pop’s most creative stars, nobody...
MIA - 'Bad Girls'
After Truffle-gate, Diplo-gate and the coolly received, Sleigh Bells-assisted sonic experimentation of ‘Maya’, MIA put a cap on a bad 2010 with the release of mixtape ‘Vicki Leekx’. It proved to be a saving grace. Sonically taking her back...
Live Review: Sonar Festival
It’s Saturday night in Barcelona and NME is surrounded by sweaty ravers who’ve beenup for over 40 hours, pupils rattling in their sockets. Three cartoon-like characters take to a stage above us and the crowd begin to sizzle. This is the only...
Live Review: M.I.A., The Warehouse Project,...
Musician, political activist, fashion designer: MIA ’s always made a proud point of her multiple personality, of being hard to pin down and even harder to anticipate. And for a while she was loved for it. With her colourful background and...
Album review: MIA - '/\/\ /\ Y /\' (NEET/XL)
You could easily let MIA ’s third album be obscured by the campaign of media manipulation, shock-and-awe polemic and fame-as-art fire-drawing that preceded it. As her face is obscured by YouTube timebars on the sleeve, it could vanish behind a...
10 Tracks You Have To Hear This Week (1/05/10)
1. MIA – ‘Born Free’ After the gentle wrong-footing of last year’s teaser ‘There’s Space For Ol Dat I See’, now the comeback proper. Deployed without warning, ‘Born Free’ and its accompanying brutally graphic 11-minute Romain...
10 Tracks You Have To Hear This Week (22/01/10)
This week's playlist features a free download from indie stalwarts Quasi, some 21st Century riot grrrl from Japanese Voyeurs, and an 'ornithologically-themed knee-trembler" from The Besnard Lakes. 1. MIA – There’s Space For Ol Dat I See...
Live Review: MIA
This weekend she will co-headline both San Diego’s Street Scene and San Francisco’s Outside Lands festivals, but tonight Maya Arulpragasam – don’t forget, named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in the world but a couple of...
MIA
Whatever you think of Maya Arulpragasam – her flaking out of her European tour and supposed retirement from life in general hasn’t gone down too well – this cynical track about the daily nine-to-five grind, comparable to Pink Floyd’s...
MIA
She may have found it tough winning the hearts of the US immigration authorities, but like everyone else should do, they eventually came round to her weird, genre-pasting charms. Musically or personality-wise, there really is no-one else like this...
