Songs and musician credits at the end.
This review first appeared in the Mumbai edition of The Hindu.
While the trailer of Mulk was a sombre one with just fleeting shots of happy moments, the ratio is sort of reversed when it comes to the music – two of the three songs in the short soundtrack are upbeat ones. The one melancholic track, Khudara, comes from Prasad Sashte, long time music producer and, I believe, debuting in Bollywood as composer. A song that, on some level, takes me back to Bhare Naina from one of director Anubhav Sinha’s past movies, Ra.One, and is rendered by Vishal Dadlani who incidentally co-composed the Ra.One track. Really well done piece though, where Sashte splendidly exploits Dadlani’s vocal skills both in terms of scale and nuances. Composer delivers equally well in his other song, the playful celebratory song Thenge Se where he and lyricist Shakeel Azmi (who writes all three songs) cleverly incorporate references to O P Nayyar-S H Bihari’s Kajra Mohabbat Wala. While Sunidhi Chauhan and Swanand Kirkire handle the song in the perfect spirit with Suvarna Tiwari’s backing, Sashte’s arrangement sees lovely use of Amit Padhye’s harmonium and Tapas Roy’s mandolin. The last song comes from Anurag Saikia, featuring in a third multi-composer soundtrack this year (it is nice to see that in three soundtracks, the man has managed to handle enough variety that he could form a stand-alone soundtrack just with his songs!), and here it is a qawwali titled Piya Samaye. The arrangement is understandably standard here for most part. But the composer has a pretty engaging – if mildly familiar – melody as well in place, and gets a competent set of singers to deliver it with finesse – Shafqat Amanat Ali (whom I really miss in Hindi these days – the last time I remember hearing him is in Firangi last year), Arshad Hussain and his team.
Given that it comes from a bunch of low profile names, Mulk’s soundtrack definitely exceeds expectations. And I really hope Anurag Saikia gets his own soundtrack at some point soon.
Music Aloud Rating: 3/5
Musician Credits
Song – Thenge Se
Singers – Sunidhi Chauhan, Swanand Kirkire & Suvarna Tiwari
Composer – Prasad Sashte
Lyrics – Shakeel Azmi
Music Production & Arranged – Prasad Sashte
Harmonium – Amit Padhye
Strokes Instruments – Tapas
Dholak – Shadab Mohammad
Recording Studio – Neo Sound & Studio Cave
Neo Recording Engineer – Pankaj Borah, Pranjal & Prasad Sashte
Mixed & Mastered – Shadab Rayeen
Sound Engineer Assistant – Abhishek Sortey
Music Co-Ordinator – Piyush Seth
Song – Khudara
Singer – Vishal Dadlani
Composer – Prasad Sashte
Lyrics – Shakeel Azmi
Music Production & Arranged – Prasad Sashte & Mithun Mohan
Guitars – Dabbu, Mithun Mohan & Raghav Chaitanya
Backing Vocals Chants & Aalap – Mithun Mohan, Ashwin, Anirudh, Himanshu, Tushar & Prasad
Recording Studio – Neo Sound & Studio Cave
Neo Recording Engineer – Pankaj Borah, Pranjal & Prasad Sashte
Mixed & Mastered – Shadab Rayeen
Music Co-Ordinator – Piyush Seth
Song – Piya Samaye
Original Song – Anurag Saikia
Singers – Shafqat Amanat Ali & Arshad Hussain
Composer, Production, Arranged & Orchestrated – Anurag Saikia
Lyrics – Shakeel Azmi
Additional Production – Ishan Das
Sound Designer – Bhaskar Sarma
Qawali Group – Arshad Hussain & Team
Additional Vocals – Shikhar Kumar & Digvijay Singh Pariyar
Backing Vocals – Dikshu Sarma & Arabinda Neog
Guitar – Ishan Das
Bass – Abhinav Bora
Tabla – Sanjeev Sen, Yusuf Ghulam Mohammad & Fazal Abdulla Azab
Dholak – Iqbal Azad, Raju Sardar & Fazal Abdulla Azab
Strokes – Tapas Roy
Harmonium – Firoz Shah
Strings Conducted – Jitendra Javda
Assistant To Anurag – Arabinda Neog & Dipakshi Kalita
Studio – Euphony Studios
Recording Engineer – Partha Das
Studio – Enzy Studio
Recording Engineer – Julian
Studio – AMV Studio
Recording Engineer – Rahul M Sarma
