‘Nacchite Ye Panaina’
Dohchay (Telugu)
Music: Sunny M.R.
Sunny M.R. happens to be Hindi composer Pritam’s ex-sound engineer and has been producing some really good music in Telugu (where he is three films old). His fourth, Dohchay , is his biggest in terms of hero-value (it stars Naga Chaitanya). ‘Nacchite Ye Panaina’ is truly representative of the sound Sunny has ushered in Telugu music — a curiously interesting disco-techno mix, sung by the reigning prince of Bollywood, Arijit Singh. It’s the kind of song that would have you wondering, ‘Hey, this sounds new’.
‘Rasathi’
36 Vayadhinile (Tamil)
Music: Santhosh Narayanan
Santhosh is arguably the most exciting composer in the Tamil film industry right now. For the Tamil remake of the Malayalam hit, How Old Are You , Santhosh ropes in fellow-singer and composer Pradeep Kumar's mother, Lalitha Vijaykumar to sing Rasathi , with an endearing guitar-tabla background. She does a phenomenal job, even gently admonishing the trumpet player during the song.
‘Bannado’
Coke Studio@MTV Season 4
Music: Sachin-Jigar
After a middling single and its music video by Amit Trivedi, Sachin-Jigar whips up things at Coke Studio’s fourth season with a wonderful three-song set. The song to hear now is Bannado , spearheaded by Tochi Raina’s excellent vocals, supported beautifully by a host of folks, including Bhungarkhan Manganiar & Group, Kalyan Baruah on the guitar and the backing vocals comprising Ronkini and Priya Saraiya (who incidentally has written the song too, in Hindi and Marwari). In fact, you’d be humming their ‘Beera beera’ interlude long after the song is over.
‘Ammanae Ammanae’
Ayirathil Iruvar (Tamil)
Music: Bharadwaj
Director Saran and composer Bharadwaj are back. And their combo, as always, produces something unique. The most interesting song is Ammanae that fuses typical Amman (not Jordan’s capital; just our neighbourhood Kulasai Mutharamman) song lyrics with 80s synthpop. Yes, it is incredibly funky and sung with the right fervour by Haritha, Nivas, Priyaavishwa and Vijaylakshmi. The dramatic contrast between the lyrics and the sound is a mind-bending experiment.
‘Raja Rani’
Raate (Kannada)
Music: V. Harikrishna
Tamil composer Deva was once called Poor Man’s Ilaiyaraaja and many other composers across the four Southern states have tried to emulate the quintessential Ilaiyaraaja sound for years. Among the younger composers, Thaman did a phenomenal job in Ayyanar ’s ‘Paniye’ where he blends his own musical sensibilities on top of a sound that screams Raja! Kannada composer Harikrishna too does something similar in ‘Raja Rani’ — the tune and sound (the rhythm, in particular) could easily be mistaken for a late 80s Ilaiyaraaja song.
(Karthik Srinivasan – www.milliblog.com )
