Album: M.I.A., Maya (XL)

With Maya, M.I.A. brings to her music the same provocative facility she demonstrated recently with the "truffle kerfuffle" dispute with New York Times's Lynn Hirschberg, and the YouTube-banned video for "Born Free", featuring graphic ethnic cleansing of gingers.

Though some tracks, such as "XXXO", feature electroclash routine enough to be on a Lady Gaga album, elsewhere there's a shift to the antagonistic – the twitchy, enticing "Steppin Up" sounds like a workshop of whirring power tools, while the galloping electro-boogie bassline sampled from Suicide's "Ghost Rider" that drives "Born Free" accurately references the era and genre whose confrontational music and info-tech concerns she echoes with her "didgital ruckus". Maya sounds like a party for Cabaret Voltaire's stroppy teen daughter.

DOWNLOAD THIS Steppin Up; Born Free; Teqkilla; It Iz What It Iz