Rahul Raj is a person who is unaffected by music charts. Sure he would like to see his compositions rule the roost, but having a song of his topping the blockbuster list every week is not a must.
The musician, who is fastidious about the kind of musical projects he picks up, says: “I am not the kind of person who goes knocking on doors for work. I need a certain comfort level with the team I am working with, so I am kind of choosy. Also, I do not like to work within a framework; I need to do my own thing; my own music.”
Well, Rahul who won the Kerala State Award for the best background score for Shyamaprasad’s Ritu , is currently out with his “kind of music” in Vinay Govind’s debut movie Kili Poyi . While the title song of the film, also called ‘Kili Poyi’, is currently a favourite on air, the second song in the album, ‘Kaatil Paayum’ is garnering attention with its ‘club feel’ to it. “‘Kaatil paayum’ was supposed to be in English. However, as we felt the audience would not be able to relate to it, we added a Malayalam pallavi to it. Sricharan and Yasin Nizar have rendered it.”
There are only two songs in the music album of the movie. The rest, 13 of them, are extracts from the background score of the film. These ‘small songs’ help the transition of scenes in the movie. This method is used in various English romantic comedies, says Rahul.
“Music has an important role in Kili Poyi . Some of the songs are in English and have been rendered by rapper Joslee Lonely Doggy, Sricharan, Vinod Varma and myself. Sumesh, Josy, Rex George, Jescin George, Aloshya Peter, Prasanth John, and Michael are part of my music crew. The opening theme for the movie has the kind of music which gives the audience an inkling to the kind of movie they are about to watch,” says Rahul, who adds that it is the second time that the Malayalam industry is releasing extracts from the score as a motion picture soundtrack. The first, he adds, was for Chekavar , for which he did the music. If the audio rights of Chekavar was bought by Tune4 Records, the rights for Kili Poyi was bought by Tech Zone.
A fan of Western music, one can see the influence of genres like orchestral, country rock, rap, and retro-jazz in Rahul’s music for Kili Poyi . If ‘8’inte Pani’ is rap-based, ‘Jomol a.k.a. Jo’ has the blues, while ‘Disco Douglas’ is inspired by the 70s’ disco period. The hummable title song of the movie has been rendered by Vinay and Rahul. The music director whose last outing in Mollywood was Bachelor Party , is now working on a Telugu movie called Paathshala by Mahi V. Raghav and Sajeevan’s Bad Boys .
