Writer Rob Kenner has a nice take on the latest release by Diplo & Switch.  Read below:

 

REVS: Major Lazer, "Guns Don't Kill People...Lazers Do"

Rob Kenner

Super DJ Diplo dips in the Reggae pool

Diplo, Mad Decent founder and renowned DJ, is the Quentin Tarantino of world music. He's a sonic scavenger with an appetite for the quirky details of far-flung cultures. He chews them up and spits them back out in an exaggerated, somehow disembodied form-not unlike musical zombies. So perhaps it should come as no surprise that Major Lazer, the various artists dancehall project from Diplo and DJ Switch of the UK's vaunted Dubsided label, comes wrapped in an elaborate backstory involving a secret zombie war and a Jamaican commando using "experimental lazers" as prosthetic limbs (shades of Tarantino's Grindhouse). In retrospect, this album was inevitable, given Diplo and Switch's groundbreaking production work with avant-garde artists like M.I.A. and Santigold, whose affinity for repurposed Jamaican sounds from ska to dub to dancehall has been a consistent, salient feature of their music. There would seem to be real potential for something great to emerge from this collaboration.

And there are moments when those great expectations are nearly fulfilled, as with the edgy lead-off track, "Hold The Line," which features Lexxus and Santi trading robotic verbal fusillades atop a jittery guitar line that bridges the gap between the Ventures surfari rock and Ennio Morricone spaghetti Westerns. (The cartoony Quick Draw McGraw sound effects lean toward the latter). Another highlight is "Can't Stop Now," a tasty reworking of the Techniques' rock steady gem "You Don't Care" featuring the sassy Jovi Rockwell and veteran hitmaker Mr. Vegas reprising their 2007 duet "You're Gonna Need Me." The beat is constructed around a willfully clumsy sample with lovingly distorted bass rather than the clean, crisp sort of re-lick that most reggae producers demand these days.

Diplo and Switch clearly cherish the glitches and low-tech glory of vintage Jamaican music. But they're much better off when re-imagining as opposed to indulging in tongue-in-cheek mimicry. The official Major Lazer press release suggests that the album "runs global pop culture through the filter of Major Lazer's particular brand of '80s-inspired digital dancehall" although there's scant trace of the Jammy's / Tubby's computerized sound to be found here. But no matter-the record is at its best when it pushes beyond dancehall conventions, as on "Lazer Theme," which splices an aggro punk bassline in the place of dancehall's customary digital bass, then flies in a reggaeton backbeat. Or in the hyperactive cyber-damsel attack "When You Hear The Bassline," or in the tweaked-out "Pon The Floor," which disintegrates a Vybz Kartel vocal-"let me see your bestest wine"-into cosmic debris.

But we don't really turn to Major Lazer for aimless pop pleasures like "Keep It Goin Harder" featuring Ricky Blaze and Nina Sky. And for all the "high-tech eclecticism" and "disparate influences" that these "über-producers" bring to bear, the music sometimes devolves into a mishmash of airhorn cliché, as on the cloying weed tune "Mary Jane."

According to legend, Major Lazer "fights vampires and various monsters, parties hard, and has a rocket powered skateboard." Unencumbered by the real-world gravitas that drives many of reggae's indigenous creators-for instance, it would be unthinkable to release an album with this title in Jamaica, a place where Glocks and Chiney Ks most certainly do kill people-Major Lazer should be venturing way outside the box. But curiously, two of the furthest out Major Lazer tracks-an M.I.A. and Busy Signal collabo, and VH1 celeb Andy Milonakis' retarded Auto-Tune bugout "Zumbie"-were left off the album at press time. Perhaps an enhanced re-release is already in the works. Here's hoping that any future versions of Major Lazer include the recently leaked Madhouse remix of "Hold The Line," re-titled "Call Mi." The new title is fitting since the track is utterly transformed, not just by Cham's bizarrely infectious flow, but also by Dave Kelly's inspired mixdown of the track built by Diplo and Switch. As the Stranger demonstrates, sometimes it's not about knowing what to put in a track so much as knowing exactly what to leave out.

Cover art for Major Lazer's "Guns Don't Kill People...Lazers Do"

Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do! Track List

1. "Hold The Line" feat. Mr. Lexx and Santigold
2. "When You Hear The Basslin" feat. Ms. Thing
3. "Can't Stop Now" feat. Mr. Vegas and Jovi Rockwell
4. "Lazer Theme" feat. Future Trouble
5. "Anything Goes" feat. Turbulence
6. "Cash Flow" feat. Jah Dan
7. "Mary Jane" feat. Mr. Evil and Mapei
8. "Bruk Out" feat. T.O.K. and Ms. Thing
9. "What U Like" feat. Amanda Blank and Einstein
10. "Keep It Goin' Louder" feat. Nina Sky and Ricky Blaze
11. "Pon De Floor" feat. Vybz Kartel
12. "Baby" feat. Prince Zimboo
13. "Jump Up" feat. Leftside and Supahype