Kadhal is an interesting album with five tracks by Music Director Paul J, who has collaborated with accomplished violin duo Ganesh Kumaresh for the instrumental, “The Search”

Phoonk Doonga,is an avoidable track with loud painful arrangements overpowering even shankar mahadevan’s vocals.Theeratha vilayaattu pillai, a medley, starts with Dr Balamurali Krishna rendering a few lines of the krithi preceded by an alaap and ends with an alaap. The rest of the medley doesn’t make much sense, at least on just listening to the track. The transition from the krithi in the beginning to nimbuda nimbuda is catchy. The rest of the song is a set of unrelated bits and pieces with nothing remarkable to offer.

The rest of the album is a treat.

In Idhu daan vaazhkaya, the music director sets a grave tone right at the beginning, with a classical violin solo seamlessly blended into a western  symphonic strings base. The song is ideal for the powerful western style of singing, which Vasundara Das excels in. Classical violin pitches in from time to time beautifully. The powerful arrangement, primarily violin based (as can be expected) proves distortion guitar unnecessary. One could have hoped for more refinement in percussion, but that’s well compensated for in this powerful song, which creates good impact.

“The Search”, an instrumental composed in collaboration with Ganesh Kumaresh featuring violinist Padma Shankar, is an absolute delight. The violin pallavi which appears intermittently in this track right from the beginning is catchy and addictive. The other layers of violin beautifully converge into this base. The canvas is  simple and captivating with apt usage of percussion (Mridangam and the drum kit, sparingly used). This one is timeless, rare to find in a movie soundtrack nowadays.

Neethaane Neethane is sheer bliss. What more can one ask than Shankat Mahadevan and Mahalaxmi Iyer singing their hearts out to a beautiful tune and delightful carnatic violin interludes. The song starts with a nadaswaram solo, “Asathoma Sathgamaya…” seeming out of place in the back ground. The track shifts and kicks off with a beautiful violin piece accompanied by a jathi announcing the treat which follows. The combination of jathis and violin is used throughout the song as interludws and the result is joyous. The arrangement for the song is perfect, using picking on strings throughout the song to great effect. The use of Thavil and mridangam is also apt. The song teasingly traverses off the beat and back, which is amazing. Also, the rhythm beautifully shifts into the 4/4 cycle towards the end of the anupallavi and goes back into the 7 beat cycle (misra chapu) used in the song.To top it all off, the singers have clearly been given creative freedom to stunning effect in the rendering, resulting in a winning track easily one of the best yet, this year.

Idhu dan vaazhkaya, the search and neethane make this album worth buying.

We  thank Music Director Paul J and Mr. K Mahadev for corrections in the initial review and apologise for the error in credits.

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For some reason I am not able to upload a third pic. So just tell me what is the significance of the answer?

Edit: Added third pic

Answer in comments.

Answer: Quoting Nitish:

“Tom’s Diner by Suzanne Vega which is based on the restaurant shown and was used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the Mp3 technology.”

We are back after a longer than expected break. Anyways, here is a simple question for today. The following artists came together to create which album?

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Hint: The song by the last band was probably the most famous one.

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Answer: The Top Gun Music Album

Pocket Mein Rocket has an interesting hook to it which more than makes up for its rather shady title. The singing by Benny Dayal is spot on and the duo do a good job on the arrangement as well, improvising well over the beat template of their middling dancy number Dance Pe Chance from RNBDJ. Things get still better with Gadbadi Hadbadi, a jazzy poppish song, the composers making the ideal choice of Vishal Dadlani for the vocals. Vishal has had a splendid year as a singer I should say! Somehow the arrangement reminded me of MJ’s Thriller. I was almost expecting “coz this is thriller” to pop up at some point in the song! I am not devaluing the track in any way, may I add! The show-stopper of the album comes right at the end, Pankhon Ko, a simple yet beautifully arranged sedate melody. While Salim Merchant does a marvellous job of soulfully crooning the song, the backing vocals deserve a special mention.

Salim-Sulaiman can take a bow. With just three songs, they have managed to come out with one of the best soundtracks of the year!

Music Aloud Rating: 8/10

Recommended tracks: All of them!!!

The team at musicaloud is going on a break for the week and so we would not be publishing our daily quiz for the coming week. We would hopefully be back on friday but definitely on saturday. Till then, enjoy!

This is the album cover of a 1970s movie soundtrack. how has the protagonist of this movie been immortalized in the world of music?

Answer in comments.

Question courtesy: The flightless one

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Answer in comments.

Question Courtesy : The flightless one

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Answer:

Question Courtesy: Flightless One

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Answer: The Rolling Stone logo. John John Pasche was a 25 year old student at London’s Royal College of Art when he asked by the Stones management to design a poster for the band’s European tour. Apparently, Mick Jagger turned up at John Pasche’s final degree show where the poster was on display. Soon after, Mick Jagger asked him to design a logo for The Rolling Stones record label and showed him an image of the Hindu Goddess Kali, which was his starting point. The work was done in about two weeks and he was just paid £50 for the task. Two years later, he was paid another £200 as a recognition from the band to its success. The copyright of the logo was lately bought by the band, but Pasche still owned the original artwork, which is currently on sale for £300,000 at the artist’s web site.

Question Courtesy: Flightless One
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Answer: The pic is of Marlon Brando in The Wild One. The song is by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The band take their name from the from Brando’s motorcycle gang in the 1953 film.

Cracked by Praneetha, Rosh, Easwar, Rajib and Nirad.