Alexander Thomas

Music I like >>

M.I.A. – Bamboo Banger

The first time I was listening to M.I.A's Bamboo Banger, I FELT TOTALLY OFFENDED! 😤

Not because of the lyrics or anything, but because of how it was put together. The samples were sloppily chopped and the production was so rough that you could think it was a sketch rather than an officially released track on a very well selling album.

But despite all of this (or rather because of this), it had an incredibly raw energy and today I can see that every bit and piece is well thought through and properly arranged.

Back at that time I was kind of at the peak of my production skills and with quite some effort and the invest of countless hours I had learnt how to to develop a track properly, arrange a tension sheet, bring the frequencies in order and by that make the whole thing punchy and crisp. But that came at a cost and the cost was that my music lost some of its edginess. Everything was properly and kind of behaving well.

Feeling offended by a song's production is good. That's what I learnt through listening to Diplo's & M.I.A's production. It made me aware that I was moving too much into one direction (striving for perfecting my production skills) and prevented me from developing what I would call the Phil Collins syndrome (over-perfecting your production skills at the expense of any liveliness in you music).

I love this song and happily noticed that it has aged quite well.