M.I.A. – Kala (VMP Exclusive)

Kala is here on 2LP exclusive neon purple & neon green vinyl, half-speed remastered by Barry Grint with Cicely Balston at Alchemy Mastering at AIR, and with an art print and new original Listening Notes. It’s the VMP Essentials Record of the Month for April 2021.

“Born in London and then raised in Sri Lanka, India and back in the UK, Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam, known best as M.I.A., epitomises what it means to be a citizen of the world. Her music basks in the abundance of the globe, and on no album is that clearer than her vivid, technicolour second full-length, 2007’s ‘Kala.’ In many ways, what M.I.A. is really the precursor to is music in the age of streaming. She was one of the first artists to understand how to build a following online: her glittery graphics so often recall the early days of the internet, and her ability to meld together all number of sonics on this album is arguably prescient of an era where music is innately so accessible that genres are beginning to dissolve. She tried to decolonise that Western hegemony over what was pop and what was so-called “world music.” To that end, on ‘Kala,’ the arbitrary delineations of borders are dissolved too. For third culture kids, the brash neon of this album cemented something we always knew: that the world is so much bigger than our backyards, and we are all infinitely richer for it.” – Tara Joshi (VMP)