Splice a strand of chain-gang melody into a breakbeat sequence….

Insert square-dance calls into the code of some collaged beats and then add a violin and a banjo…

Take the allelujah-gene from a 17th-century choral song and place it into the DNA of dancehall reggae…

K.I.A., in his studio 'lab', has done precisely this on his new CD, "adieu, shinjuku zulu", creating transgenre pop electronica with the help of a multitude of singers: "Almighty Beat", featuring the soulful voice of Shawn Skeir surrounded by big beats and bass, is a soaring track about salvation; "Box-the-Gnat" is a folk-'e' love song, with a collage of footstomps, handclaps, electronic rhythms, and square-dance lyrics sung beautifully by Courtney Farquhar; "Allelujah", featuring soothing choral vocals courtesy Eugene Spanier, takes dub to a transcendent level...

"What if dub had been invented in Europe in the 17th century? Or if folk singers a hundred years ago had laptops not banjos?"

Many of K.I.A.'s songs start as an idea or a question. What if the story started in Bowie's "Ground Control" and "Ashes to Ashes" were continued, but told from the perspective of his wife? Achingly sung by Larissa Gomes, "Mrs Tom" adds layers of meaning to the Major Tom story, but also exists as it's own haunting track.…With "Bedouin Engine" the idea was to create an epic, evolving, dance track using the human voice as the only instrument… How would African and operatic vocals sound woven together? "Operafrica" was the result...

"My flight and others got stuck in Winnipeg. Bored and wandering the airport I came across a Japanese square-dance team, stranded while en route to the World Championships. To pass the time they were practicing. I recorded them with my digital camera, then later lifted just the sounds to construct the rhythms for box-the-gnat."

But it's not solely about ideas. Ultimately, it's about soul. K.I.A.'s goal is to create moving, narrative songs that are accessible and forward-looking; contemporary but timeless, surprising yet inevitable. [Mission accomplished: the storytelling element and pop appeal of his tracks from this CD and his last one have led to several being featured in Queer as Folk, Felicity, the Real World (MTV), Picture Claire (film by Bruce McDonald), and other productions.]

K.I.A. has lived in Calgary, Tokyo, Los Angeles and currently Toronto; he's also traveled extensively. This internationalist vibe is very evident in the music; many tracks have an exotic feel, often with an African or Eastern chant element. He's expanding on the sound he created on his first CD, released under the name shinjuku ZULU, (which received critical praise from the Gazette, the Herald, etc., and was in the Globe and Mail's top ten discs of the year.) This time, though, he's using more lyrics and a cast of thousands--including many live percussionists and vocalists, whom he recorded at his home studio.

"I love the human voice...but I also love synths , constructed beats and using the studio as a tool... so there's always this organic versus artificial dynamic in my music."

K.I.A. is also an accomplished visual artist. (His most recent solo show in Toronto got great reviews from the Toronto Star, etc.) His enormous paintings, like the music, explore technotribal themes. Painted on movable panels, they can be "remixed" or reconfigured into new shapes and meaning… just like his music: "Happiness like Motion" is a breaks version of the acappella lullaby "Sweetness likes the Reverb" from the CD he recorded as shinjuku ZULU. The first track on the 'adieu…" CD, "Losing My Mind", is a straight-up club cut but will appear on his next CD with a male jazz vocalist and with a live feel. All his releases will be linked in some way, referring back and forth to each other over time. In fact, he plans to release a 'sister' disc, part II to "adieu…" early next year, with many of the same vocalists appearing a second time.

"I can intermix all my paintings together into one huge piece, and so I see each individual painting as part of some future whole. It's the same with the music; a song, or even a CD, is just one part of the entire inter-related work."

"I make music intuitively, and I approach doing it as a music-lover. Like most people I'm into a wide variety of genres, from electronica to folk to world, rock, dub--a good song is a good song, however it's delivered. I like hooks and experimentation, I like tracks that work when you focus intently on them or are just playing them in the background; I want some fast songs, some slow ones, songs that cover a wide emotional spectrum... My all-time favorite discs have all of that. You don't get tired of them in a week, you can come back months, even years later and get something fresh. If "adieu, shinjuku zulu" works that way for people, I'd be very happy."