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Panjabi MC

Mundian To Bach Ke

Label: Instant Karma Records Release Date: 13/01/2003

3149
chrisnettleton by Chris Nettleton January 20th, 2003

This is a work of art.

....While perhaps that displays my ignorance of the Asian music scene(I'm sure that there's plenty of great hiphop-meets-bhangra flavas going on if you mix in the right circles), here context is everything.Originally released towards the tail end of last year, this track rose up from the clubs, rose up from the roots , sounds nothing like anything else in the charts, sounds a billion miles away from all the manufactured, processed McShitPop, and a billion miles away from the pretty young angst brigades... and makes me feel kind of warm inside, because hearing Mundian To Bach Ke stand out like a sore thumb on the radio feels like proper subversion, rather than the noisy guitars and tired clichés.

How's it sound? Well.. a fusion between Indian vocals and percussion , a mandolin sounding hooky riff, and a purely synthetic hip hop beat, with the theme from Knight Rider spun in underneath, syncopating and tying the whole thing together. A pure oldschool HipHop record, in the way many ingredients are cut and pasted together, and a record that is simultaneously way more rootsy and raw than mainstream Asian artists lke Talvin Singh, Nitin Sawhney, ADF... This one's going to get you dancing around like a wild thing!!

..and for the people who can't enjoy a song without knowledge of the words, the website even provides an english translation!

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