Downtown
2009
Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do (Explicit)
About This Album
Pan-American dance diplomats Diplo and Switch moved from Brazilian baile funk and Baltimore club music to Jamaican dancehall for Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do, the debut album for their Major Lazer project. (There was also a one-off Top Ten hit and Grammy-nominated Record of the Year in there too, for M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes.") The results are impressive standard-bearers for dancehall, displaying the duo's ample facility for floating the type of productions that have made dancehall the most experimental and extreme type of commercial dance music since it dawned in the mid-'80s. Inveterate DJs and music fans, both Diplo and Switch are well versed in the style, and they apparently had no difficulty recruiting dancehall's best and brightest for features, including vocalists Mr. Lex, Ms. Thing, and Mr. Vegas as well as production powerhouse Vybz Kartel (they also lured in a pair of non-dancehall types, Santigold and Amanda Blank). As other producers have known, including the Bug and DJ /rupture, dancehall music is perfect for experimentalist dance producers. It's a careening and unpredictable style, where hooks can be fashioned from any noises: sirens, horns, vocal tags, horses neighing, cellphones buzzing, babies crying -- and of course, lasers.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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