By Jesse Serwer
When Major Lazer first turned up in 2009 with Guns Don’t Kill People, Lazers Do, it seemed a safe bet that Diplo and Switch’s dancehall concept album would be a one-off, and perhaps soon-forgotten, vanity project. Yet somehow here we are. With an Adult Swim show on the horizon, a Beyonce hit based on their “Pon De Floor” rhythm on the charts, and a much anticipated second album on the way, the Brit and the Yank (as well as their cartoon mascot and Skerrit Bwoy) have the Caribbean music world’s full attention right now, as well as those in dance music and hipster circles.
For months now, we’ve been hearing–via Twitter, word of mouth and carrier pigeon–about the big-time collaborators Diplo and Switch have been pulling into the studio for LP No. 2. Finally on Friday a taste of the results turned up in the form of a loosely structured Youtube clip, which finds Diplo and Switch heading out into the woods and proclaiming a certain oddly rooted specimen “the Major Lazer tree,” before cutting to some catchy, Vybz Kartel-voiced audio and snippets of studio sessions with Wiley and Amber Coffman of indie rock band Dirty Projectors. Supposedly the first single from the album, “Original Don,” arrives later this week. We’ll be looking out for it (though portions of the tune, a collaboration with Dutch DJ team the Partysquad, however, can already be heard here).