Mar 18, 2004 11:50 AM
6399 Views
(Updated Mar 19, 2004 06:52 PM)
After a very good album in Kangalal Kaithu Sei, here he goes to the opposite end, A noisy, easily forgetable album.
Its technically not a bad album, but for music to be appealing it has to not only attract but also sustain that attraction for long time. Not just till you hear the next song. Unfortunately, he settles for lower grades, Alas.
- Good Bye Nanba (Sunitha Sarathy, Shankar Mahadevan, Lucky Ali and Karthick)
Having a female to murmer the lyrics to herself has been done in old songs, but its a good idea. But thanks to Sunitha's bad pronounciation, she only plays spoilsport. Shankar starts well, but with all the noisy intruments banging hard simultaneously, its not NOT at all nice.
- Jana Gana Mana (A.R.Rahman, Karthik)
Rythem sounds very much like 'Break the rules'. I cant understand what ARR was trying to do here, You can skip this one. Nothing is lost. Could have chosen Shankar Mahadevan. Never mind, with all these loud instruments, it doesnt really matter.
- Dol Dol (Rap and lyrics by Blaaze, Ethnic vocals by Shaheen)
After a bad start ( instruments starting and overlapping over the female vocal), settles for a very nice rythem and ends distinctively. This piece falls into the genre of 'Manmatha masam' from Paarthale Paravasam, but not all that great. Vocal, Trumpets, drums and many other instruments are played, but the only sound that intrested me was a nice guitar/mandolin like sound starting at about 2:32. I am still wondering what the instrument is.
- Yakkai Thiri (A.R.Rahman, Sunitha Sarathy, Shalini Singh)
How will it sound if you try to fit in a set of Haiku's in a song? Answer is: It will be hard to understand. Its that simple. Yet, it appeals to ARR as worth enough to experiment, lets see how this gets received. To make things worse, loud instruments plays all around. And ARRs voice hardly helps.
- Nenjam Ellam (Adnan Sami, Sujatha)
Finally, here is a song where instruments dont do any harm. Adan Sami is OK for vocal voice here and there, but not for the whole song. Luckily its a duet with the duet queen Sujatha!. When was the last time, ARR called on Sujatha? I dont rememeber that he did recently. Ends with those bell sounds which he is using recently in plenty - a good carry over from his chinese film?
- Sandai Kozhi (Madhushree, A.R.Rahman)
Nice slow paced song, but not fluent tamil prounciation in Madhushree. ARR provides only 'aakarams', no lyrics in singing. MadhuShree - another singer sounding similar to Sadhana Sargam/Kavitha/Mahalakshmi. Ok, for a variety, but not my favourite.
Summary:
Loud Instruments overlap over vocal make it really noisy and less audiable. There is nothing much new in this album. 6 Songs, could have done with 3. Hard to believe that this is for a Manirathnam film.
To any composer, voice should be the Supreme instrument of choice, followed by real instruments and then synthetic sound should only be the last option.
Not only that ARRs choice of singers is largely absurd in this album, synthetic sound and digital voice modulation is killing to true nature of real music. I loved his full instrumentation with very little lyrics and Fusion in Parthale Paravsam and elsewhere before, but ARR has failed to hit the right chords this time.
