- Hey GoodBye Nanba – Sunitha Sarathy’s voice makes me horny. Especially the “Ssshhh” at the end.
- Jana Gana Mana refuses to go out of my head. The bass loop might be something a stupid Frooty Loops user created, using a random map. 2:15 to 2:35 rocks like nothing else.
- Sandai Kozhi – Madhushree’s voice sucks. It’s like a bad imitation of Alka Yagnik and Sadhna Sargam at the same time. Happy crap.
- Dol Dol. Talvin Singh ripoff, at least the beats. Shahin Badar’s ethnic vocals are anything but ethnic. At least Blaaze does not spoil the rap portions like that George Peters guy did in Lakeer. Bang Bang indeed.
- Nenjam Ellam – Adnan Sami trying out variants of a Tamil phrase ( I won’t embarass myself by trying to repeat the phrase, I dunno Tamil anyways ) between 1:30 and 1:45 sounds like the guy in Ila Arun’s Vote For Ghaghra, saying “Tu Kaye Boli”. How does acoustic bass sound with a breakbeat and synthetic instruments? Pretty good, as far as this song goes.
- Yakkai Thiri. Fanaa. Supposed to be High Vairumuthu Poetry mixed with frenzied electronics and vocals. I don’t know about the poetry, but this sounds pretty frenzied, all right. Rahman’s vocals make it alternately cheesy and High Musicmanship. I end up hating the aalap at the end one time, and liking it some other time.
The score stays in the same territory that Rahman covered in Kaadhal Virus and Boys, dollops of electronica mixed with traditional instruments, nothing like conventional film-tracks. Of course it does not lack in melody, but there are very few portions that are hummable. ( Huh, if I wanted hummable I would listen to Himesh Hum Hum Reshammiya! ) It’s kind of like the Matrix scores by Don Davis, very loud at times and you cannot just put the music on in the background and do something else, unless you are accustomed to some degrees of heavy metal/electronica.
It would be interesting to see how my opinions on this album will differ after…say…15 days.
Fuck, what an album! Sunitha Sarathy married?
I shall try to find out. Mental note: also check if Sunitha Sarathy is from Sri Lanka.
I liked 1, 2 and 4. I still think the album is below par, by Rehman standards. So there!
With due respect to Yoda
No Rahman Standard there is ,
There is only The Force.
And the Force is strong in this one.
*kangalal keithu sei* tracks beat any other recent Rahman score. Period.
KKS was good, no doubt, but it stank of the nineties. ARR’s music keeps changing, and KKS sounded like the director wanted him to compose music of the kind Rahman would have composed in his early days.
That said, I also say – I love that album too.
incense dont stink. similarly, rahman’s early compositions do not stink of the nineties. if i would listen to a boys or a Azutha, say, once, i would play a Bombay or a Roja, 10 times.
This sucks. Why does everything have to boil down to Bombay/Roja against whatever else ARR produces? Those albums were good in their time, because there was nothing like them produced back then. Right now, with all the copycats around recycling ARR’s “nineties sound”, if something like Roja comes out, it would sound very mediocre. KKS nearly fell into that trap, IMHO, but it redeems itself by the innovation in some of the songs and the good choice of voices. It felt nostalgic, true, but I wouldn’t like ARR’s music to sound this way further down the line.
Of course, what I feel does not matter too much in the Rahmanian scheme of things, but still…. :)
Do your DVD rips give the same sound and picture quality as the originals? I think not. Copycats can never spin the same magic because they arent as skillful as the original.
***
Magic shows for public amusement exists since time unknown. Shows by illusionists PC Sarkar and David Copperfield still run houseful.
***
i dont think the magic of original tricks ever wane, be it music or illusion.
PS: I still like Elvis. i dont see what sucks so much.
Beg to differ
I understand your point, but I really doubt if a Roja released today would sound mediocre. How about Iruvar, Thiruda Thiruda, Pudhiya Mugham and Sangamam? Very 90s? Mediocre today? I think not.
I’m not against him trying new stuff. I liked Boys a lot. I might like AE too, given time. However I would still like at least one number to be hummable, like you put it. Give me a Raasathi, a Yennavale, a Kannukku Mei Azhagu or even a Pachai Nirame!
And I like Elvis too. ;)
Re: Beg to differ
Personal opinion, of course – it’s very easy to come up with the tune for a “melodious” song i.e something very hummable, very catchy, feel-good and pleasing to the ear. Look at people like Sandesh Shandilya ( Chameli ) or even Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. And they do a good job out of it too.
Roja, Pudhiya Mugam, Thiruda Thiruda et al wouldn’t sound mediocre today, of course. But you bring out something that sounds like them, and it would sound very familiar indeed. It’s just that ARR redefined the nineties sound in his own mould – one can pinpoint a piece of music and map it to this point in time, and with the nineties, he managed to evolve too. Check out the difference between the early ones ( Roja, PM, Vandicholai Chinrasu ) to the beat-driven Mr Romeo, Lovebirds, Kaadhalan and then the folksy-north-meets-south feel of Mudhalvan, Taj Mahal, Taal.
It’s like when Bombay came out and everybody ( at least people I knew )wondered about the mininalist arrangements of Kannalanae – their contention was that instruments was ARR’s strong point, so why were there no proper instruments in that song.
ARR seems to be breaking free of those trappings of hyper-fan-expectation and coming up with something challenging enough to listen to. I don’t know how he manages to do it. Were you expecting something like this for AE? I wasn’t!
And I find Jana Gana Mana CRAZILY hummable. :-)
Re: Beg to differ
I totally agree that Jana Gana Mana is hummable. Maybe I shouldn’t have chosen ‘hummable’ over melodious. What I meant is melody+lasting power, which is definitely there in Raasathi, Kannalane, Chinna chinna asai, etc. I’ve already forgotten the Chameli song.
Let put this another way and see if it makes sense. My main grouse is that Sundai Kozhi and Nenjam Ellam are just average songs. If one of them had the lasting power of a Raasathi, I would have been happy with the album.
I’m ok with the techno beats. I might not like it very much, but I like that Rehman continues to churn out new stuff.
And this after playing the cd ten times in two days. ‘Nuff said.
Good review – makes me want to try out the Tamil OST, must say that ‘Yuva’ didn’t impress me much on the first two hearings.
Then again. maybe i just need a few more hearings …….
I didn’t like the lyrics of Yuva at all. They do not have the clean sound of the Tamil version. Not that it matters, the heavy instruments and the vocoding render the words pretty much unintelligible.
agreee..
nice overview..
i agree to u.the lyrics dont have the standard..thet r just there coz they r supposed to b..but hey the music rulez…Rahman has really given a very fine touch to it…use of trance in one of the song is done quite beutifully…if u have songs of Kadhaal virus (Tamil) pls do post it some day…
Re: agreee..
Kaadhal Virus happens to be one Tamil album you can find throughout India. No, seriously. That’s because Sony brought it out, and there were very poor sales ( the movie was godawful!) , so they just distributed their stock throughout India. I have seen the album in Music World/Planet M stores in Pune, Bombay, even in GUwahati. And I remember reading a thread in Arrfangroups that a guy in Ludhiana found it in one of his neighbourhood shops.
Yes, that’s often been a problem with the Hindi versions, esp. when penned by Mian Mehboob.
And lyrics matter a lot to me – so whether they’re bad or unintelligible, the songs lose a lot of their appeal.