W ith just under a week to go before actor-director Vineeth Sreenivasan’s Thira is slated to hits theatres (November 14), its music director Shaan Rahman is frenetic. He’s just completed two additional tracks for the film that stars Shobhana and debutant Dhyaan Sreenivasan (Vineeth’s brother) in the lead. “I’m racing against time to complete it,” says Shaan, sounding a bit hassled but euphoric about his third venture with his buddy Vineeth, nonetheless. Excerpts from a quick chat with Shaan…
Living up to expectations
Audience expectations are always there on the back of our minds. Within a couple of days of the trailer release the number of views crossed 2.75 lakh! But Thira is completely different in form, mood, content, style and everything that matters from my previous films with Vineeth — Thattathin Marayathu and Malarvady Arts Club . If people are expecting saccharine sweet numbers they’re mistaken. Thira is raw and powerful, with not even a pinch of sugar. Even the visuals and the mood are raw.
Lots of experiments
This is the first time that I am working on a thriller; one that is on a socially relevant issue. As such I have experimented with sounds a lot, fusing this and that. The film has dialogues in Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada and Hindi and because of that I was able to play around with a lot of regional genres and sound. The music is not Malayali, actually. In fact, major portions of the movie were shot in Chennai, Belgaum and Goa, the sounds of which are very different from Kerala.
The songs
There are five songs, four of which are part of the movie, including the song ‘Thazhvaram...’ which will likely be released before the movie. The title track has been sung by Vineeth himself, while Neha Nair, who has a delightfully rock and Hindustani flavour to her voice, has sung three numbers. Hisham, a former contestant on Idea Star Singer , Sachin Warrier, Job Kurien and Sayanora have also sung in the film.
Working with Vineeth
This is our third film together and our working relationship is how it has been since day one. Vineeth has got much more clarity and because I’ve been with him from the first I understand what he is saying. I composed the music and the background scores of Thira without seeing it, but since I knew the film inside out it was easy. Thankfully the music and the scores fit in nicely with the visuals.
