Major Lazer

Lazers Never Die EP (Downtown/Mad Decent)

By Catherine Disabato
Published: August 7th, 2010 | 7:00am

It’s hard not to think of Major Lazer’s latest EP, Lazers Never Die, as an extension of the full-length that preceded it, Guns Don’t Kill People… Lazers Do—a kind of musical epilogue. Stylistically, it’s a miniaturized version of the LP, comprised of two new tracks and three remixes of songs from Guns.

Lazers Never Die maintains one of the best elements that DJs Diplo and Switch established while making their first album, which is a presiding element of playfulness: “Major Lazer” is a Jamaican cartoon commando! He lost his arm in a secret zombie war in 1984! He replaced it with a gun! He fights vampires! All of this absurdity works because the music itself is also playful—in Lazers as much as in Guns, style matches substance.

Opener “Sound of Siren” is the best of the bunch, a sparsely instrumented but addictive little banger featuring M.I.A. (I could say something here about M.I.A., and the fact Diplo and Switch met while working on her tracks, and that Diplo seems to be distancing himself from /\/\ /\ Y /\, but I’m so bored with the M.I.A. backlash.)

The Buraka Som Sistema remix of “Bruk Out” manages to improve on one of Guns best tracks, and “Can’t Stop Now”—basically a reggae track on the LP—is cleverly remade as an electronic dance song and benefits from very fast and very cheeky rapping from Ms. Banks. Lazers Never Die makes for another set of perfect summer jams from Diplo and Switch.

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Downtown Music

Mad Decent Records