Globalization Disco: LAKILAKI

DJ LAKILAKI has, according to her MySpace profile, “love for Thaidisco,her tracks are filled with tropical flavors, but it still has Japanese oriental flavors to it.” This sorta of line drips with public relations sweat, the kind of mind-boggling prose a recent journalism school graduate cobbles together when they realize rent isn’t getting paid anytime soon. I mean….”Japanese oriental flavors?” That’s pure Slumdog Millionaire-like bait, trying to get folks who don’t know much about either Thailand or Japan hooked. M.I.A. does this sometimes and it gets really annoying even before you can drop in a forced truffle-fry joke.

LAKILAKI, though, manages to be more Vicky Leekx than that album everyone hated because she doesn’t give into her own PR. As someone who has no idea what “Thaidisco” sounds like…and can only picture “mayonnaise and corn” when I hear the Japan line… LAKILAKI’s music impresses either because this doesn’t sound like how you’d expect “Thaidisco” to sound (I’m picturing a Sublime Frequencies compilation with loud beats) or because it sounds so much like Thaidisco LAKILAKI has it pegged. Though she does throw in the occasional “far east” touch, she mostly reimagines dance as a fast-forwarded rush of colorful sounds. The whizzing “NEW HAPPY YEAR” throws diced up vocal shouts over traditional-sounding drums and other local flavors…before blasting it all off into orbit via insane pace. The rest of the tracks available here follow a similar format…check the glowing rush of “THEN AFTER DISCOTEQUE,” which slaps slowed bursts over limb-disconnecting beats to immediate pleasure…yet LAKILAKI makes each song feel unique, not chain-store curry. Listen here.