MAJOR LAZER
Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do (Downtown Records)
A dancehall record with a sense of identity is tough to come by -- in
practice, the songs will rarely be played sequentially; they'll haunt
mix tapes and DJ sets, each standing on its own. Guns Don't Kill People...
Lazers Do is best approached with this in mind. This first full-length
project from super-producers Diplo and Switch (best known as
collaborators for M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes") is offered under the
pseudonymic persona of Major Lazer. A few trademarks come back again and
again to ground the wildly diverse material of the album -- as in "Paper
Planes," strategic use of sound effects (cell phones, cash registers,
glass breaking and, of course, a laser gun) drive most of Guns Don't
Kill People's songs. Occasionally, this assertion that anything can be
musical is accompanied by a genius sense of humor -- the penultimate song
features an AutoTuned version of a baby crying, which starts to sound
good enough to make you think twice about T-Pain. An all-star cast of
collaborators -- dancehall stars like Vybz Kartel, plus Santigold and Nina
Sky for crossover appeal -- ensure the album never starts to sound
repetitive; it's just hard for Major Lazer to craft its own identity
when it's so dependent on sampling others'.
Alexandria Symonds
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