Weekly Songs - 12 June, 2022

1.  Superhuman

It is amazing when you can trust a certain name, and can bet on the quality of their work and output. Tarang Joseph is one of those musicians who falls right smack in the middle of that category. A regular on my rankings thanks to some consistently good composition, flamboyant Piano chops and amazing vocals. “Feeling empty” and “Destiny” were excellent tracks that both got featured among the best in the country and now we have this. Tarang gets RANJ on board, a diva with an attitude that makes most of us envious and she comes in with the savvy Rap portions along with Mary Ann Alexander on vocals. Tarang has written, composed and performed as usual with his unmissable role as the Pianist as well. Doc Awes does the musical production and it is one heck of a track possessing all the perfect ingredients.  You don’t have to be feeling sorry Tarang, maybe you and the entire team can feel superhuman for this effort. Surya Kalyan keeps the song groovy and stylish with his bass guitars. Doc Awes ups the game with the splendid horns section and drums and just when you think “wow, love where this track is heading”, RANJ brings the house down with her Rap rendition and many artists wanting to specialize in Rap/Hip=Hip can learn a thing or two from her. The constant Piano in the background with the rap feels like a deluge of energy. The track is mastered by Stuart G Hawkes and on the video credits side, the producer is Yashas Hegde with Denin Day as DOP, Divya Runwal doing the set designs, Akshaya on styling and Deanne on Makeup. Akshit Bahri handles the subtitles, with Saasmit Chhetri directing the video.

2. Is this that feeling

A few combinations are always golden, and they work together like magic. Many months ago we had a composition by Meghdeep Bose which was sung by Shekhar Ravijani called “Boonda Baandhi”, a tranquil melody that perfectly fits the impending monsoon in Mumbai. Now we have nothing tranquil about this song, but is scintillating in quality and impact, bringing in elements of Latino Jazz, Calypso styles. Shekhar has composed and sung it with impeccable bravado and here Meghdeep has produced, arranged and mixed the track. The first time I heard, I couldn’t stop singing the title lines, and I only ended up irritating my wife even though she is a huge Shekhar fan, I probably should blame it on my singing. I just wanted to drive the point that this song is contagious so watch out. Priya Saraiya mixes Hindi and English lyrics so beautifully but the Hero is Shekhar and how he delivers it vocally. Meghdeep can’t be far behind and probably he has elevated a very catchy tune into something of monstrous likability. I over the years have attached great respect and admiration for Meghdeep’s work and he time again surpasses my expectations. The guitars right at the start set you up for something fiery along with the tantalizing riff on the guitars and the basslines. The song has some influences of the Vishal-Sheykhar times. Hear the amazing bass guitar notes along with the percussion when he sings “Jo dil mein reh jati hai”. How eloquently Meghdeep brings in the trumpets and Accordion into the fray of things. It is a joy ride and you need to hear it to believe it. The track is mastered by Christian Wright and Joshua Rodrigues is the mastering co-ordinator

3. Khat

Big names don’t surprise as much as some new singers and composers, when you suddenly hear their work for the first time. It brings a smile wider than the pacific rim. I specifically loved the guitar strokes by Arbaaz Khan who keeps the romantic quotient very high with his ingenious plucking. The line that is my favorite is “Har dam tu, haan tiu, har haal mein tu”, sung beautifully by Durgesh R Rajbhatt and Deepali Sathe. I cannot make out who among the two is more mellifluous, maybe they both equally are. Durgesh composes a soft and tender melody that oozes rich quality. The sound of the percussion instrument which is mostly a Thavil to my mind is a great addition. The interlude on guitars takes the song forward, and the stanza is a beautiful extension of the melody and the vocalists are truly like an oasis in the desert, rare and priceless. Saaveri Verma cooks up perfectly sensible and emotional lyrics that will make you shed a tear thinking of your loved one. Durgesh does quite well on the arrangements and programing which I am sure includes all the rhythms and the track is mixed and mastered by Pranjal Bohra and the recording is by Rahul Sharma and Sameer. The song does have a mild flavor of “Hey Sona, Hey Sona”, which was incidentally composed by Vishal-Sheykhar.  

4. Aur kya (Chapter 1)

I don’t remember the last time I featured 3 songs from the same EP in 3 different weeks by any musician from the day I started reviewing music. Is this guy Anurag Mishra cut form a different fabric? The previous songs “Khwaab” and “Dhaage” were fabulous tunes and productions and the effort that has gone into each of these is there for all to see. Every song has a story and a video that depicts a message, like this one here showcases the life of Ganesh Vanare, a photographer and influencer.  Very impressive screenplay and theme shows the main character getting a letter from his younger version and the idea of the video was to inspire others through Ganesh’s story. Anurag has composed and written this very touching number that rises and ebbs like a wave. When I heard it the first time it reminded me of an Ajay-Atul score and Anurag should be proud of this comparison. The female vocals are by this Ahmendabad based musician, Krishani Gadhvi and she acts as the perfect complement to Anurag’s tantalizing vocals. The strings arranged in the background along with the Piano, and harmonies are like extremely well assembled blocks in a structure giving stability and strength to the final output. Prasanna Suresh who has been a regular for all his composition/ production work of late especially in collaboration with Sanah Moidutty produces this one too, so he must desrve a pat on the back for all the grand sounds we hear and a fine finished good. Jaichu C and Prasanna Suesh have mixed and mastered the track. As far as the beautiful video goes, Bijoya handles the story, direction and screenplay with Abhii Kamble as cinematographer and photography by Rishi Agarwal.

5. Who I love

Ananya has been featured before with a A-grade song called “State of the art” and so I recommend that you first listen to that to know what a high bar she had set for herself. Now we know sequels are always difficult for people to enjoy and they never get even remotely close to being a decent effort after the original. But Ananya stuns me with her “Who I love”. It has the striking presence of Sanjay Divecha on guitars stroking away to glory and he also has adequately flaunted his production and arrangement skills on this one. It is a wholesome number that will please the ears in every way possible, so long as you are looking for music in its purest form. Icing on the cake, well who doesn’t love that, and Ananya has that too for us with Brecilla Dsouza’s backing vocals in the number. If I am not wrong Ananya did the same for Brecilla’s single called “Know you Hail Mary” which too was featured and reviewed here. The reason I called this an icing is because I Have reason to believe Brecilla is one of the finest vocalists out there and she brings a fine element in the harmonies thereby enriching Ananya’s wonderful composition. The guitar notes are a separate song in itself and pay close attention to the acoustic and bass guitars, with some very soothing percussions. The humming is like a lovely pack of birds calling out in love. The electric guitar solo is unexpected and turns the song into something more energetic from there on.

6. Mehki hawa

It seems to be a new band of boys from Mumbai and they call themselves ‘The Atlas Project’ (TAP), and I am sure with this excellent and exciting new single their name should soon be on the map. Get it? It is a great move to rope in this talented singer-songwriter Ashish Kulkarni to do the vocals. People might know him from the recent Indian Idol but I have featured him a few times even before for some excellent Hindi indie singles. The band is a pop focus group, but the song is very gentle like the blues, and the song literally feels like the cool breeze as the title says. Soumil Pandit plays the guitars, and I love the drums being so gentle like it barely exists. The harmonies are excellent arranged right from the beginning. The electric guitar solo is splendid after the initial vocals, and let us applaud Jignesh Patel for the high-hat drums and even otherwise for being solid. Archit Shah and Ruparel SMit were together as a duo making music and they probably are the brains behind the composition and programming for TAP. Some of the excellent percussion we hear is because of the specialist Omkar Salunkhe and he has been working with AR Rahman and I remember mentioning his name when I reviewed “Jalwanuma” the song few weeks ago. Omkar is a rhythm programmer, percussionist and rhythm producer. The fantastic bass guitars are by Govind Gawli and it keeps it stylist right through. The song has some excellent layers if you pay attention there are so many instruments coming and going, and I think I also heard the slide guitar if I am not wrong. The track is mixed by Vijay Dayal and mastered by Donal Whelan. Ashish truly experiments with his vocals, improvising the notes and he comes out on top every single time he does that. The song is not without a clean and nice theme and message and it is apparently about a bird called “Mehki” and it talks about the journey on flight it is taking against the heavy winds, probably indicating the journey that TAP itself is taking. I wish them a happy flight, and always a safe landing at the destination.

7. Laage re nain

It is extremely exciting when singers, instrumentalists cross the bridge over into musical composition, just like how actors enter the domain of direction. It is an uptick and a higher run of their professional ladders and it showcases their overall sense and sensibilities in music. Well Paras Nath is a brilliant flautist, just listen to him compete and at times dominate Shreya Ghoshal in “Muraliya” by Salim-Sulaiman released as a part of Bhoomi 2020. Here he as recreated, arranged this song and added some very fine textures and layers to the song. Pratibha Singh Baghel is a walking, singing ‘University of Ghazal style music’, and she nails the vocals. Dilshad Khan’s Sarangi beautifully decorates the interlude along with Pratibha’s swara delivery. The way the song also eludes a Jazz style thanks to the tempo, drums, and bass guitars is a masterstroke. Santhosh Mulekar does the music programming while all the woodwinds and Flute is played by the man Paras himself. The song sounds very much like an influence of Raag Hamsadhwani to my ears. Sameer DHarap does the recording while Elvis Garagic handles the mixing and mastering. The outro with the aalap and flute solo is fitting.

8. Have you

This Chennai based duo is really making heads turn, or should I say ears turn. Anyway I love the brand of music, as I feel they are creating their niche space where no one seems to step into, and they too don’t just create hashed up redundant numbers. The song ‘Impostor’ was very special, and even before reviewing that, I have bene a fan of their work. Here is “Have You” and the duo once again hit the right notes literally. Pavithra Krishnaswamy really impacts you with her voice and delivery as there is not even an iota dishonesty or affectedness in her vocal expression.  They work once again with another wonderful set of musicians especially Ashwin Vinayagamoorthy and Sivanesh Natarjan who also worked on “Impostor”. Ashwin has produced the song, with rhythm and all additional keyboard programming and Sivanesh Natarjan joins as the recording engineer along with mixing and mastering. The song in some ways feels like Madonna’s “Frozen” especially when Pavithra hums. Goutham Kumar plays the mild acoustic guitars and the line are brilliantly written asking “Have you even fully lived, if you haven’t embraced the danger of the sweet liberation of crying in front of strangers”. In terms of the musical notes my favorite line is the one that follows this singing “Have you woken up to a lie, well so have I”. The way the electric guitar solo broaches into the song feels like listening to a piece by “Dire Straits” in full flow, especially the number “Brother in Arms” comes to mind, and well done Cletus Amalan on that. Nived NP can be heard on all the wonderful bass, Piano, synths and he does the string arrangements as well.

9. Sabb dhuaan hai

 We have all heard proverbs and adages in almost every language stating that ‘everything is just an illusion’ and maybe ‘nothing is what it seems’, and this is the message that ‘Daira’ the band is driving at. I have loved their earlier single called ‘Basar’, and now featuring this wonderful single.  Piyush Kapoor has this enviable voice that perfectly fits the rock genre and he also has written these engaging lines. I love the guitar riff that keeps playing, especially wonderful notes those, played by Shivam Pant and Vikalp Sharma. A wonderful solo on electric guitar sets the song ablaze helped adequately by Pratik Kulgod. Piyush also has composed and played the trumpet and that creates a beautiful interludal piece, with Sourya Mukherjee on bass. Shivam and Vikalp handle all the sound design and production on drums and with Vikalp mixing, Marc Felish does the mastering.

10. Raat barr

 He is a multi-talented genius, because his movies and music is always a cut above the rest. Vishal Bhardwaj shines in this anthology called “Modern Love Mumbai” and despite having some very renowned as well as young musicians, his is one of the other two songs that have been outstanding, I will feature two more songs in the subsequent weeks from this movie. I finally am happy for Meiyang Chang whose singing is probably always sidelined and he has become a presenter and actor with stereotypical roles. The song is a mellow lullaby, with those Nylon Guitars mildly playing in the background, and the bass guitars and Harmonica giving that tingling feeling with their presence. The way Meiyang ends the line singing “Raat Bhar” I am immediately tempted to sing that brilliant number by Maestro Ilaiyaraja called “ Rajaraja Chozhan naan”. Vishal has also penned the lyrics with some very interesting lines about texting, tweeting and so on. Another musician takes the lion’s share of contributions with Debarpito Saha producing, playing the Nylon string guitars, and also lending his voice in the chorus. Salman AFridi does the recording and mixing while Christian Wright masters the track. The vocals on the chorus belong to Deepti Rege, Archana Gore, Jeetendra Tupe, Debarpito who add a wonderful layer on the harmonies in so many segments. You fall in love with lines like “Jo bhi paas hai, who kam pasand hai” both lyrically and musically.

11. Sottallo Bugallo

A renowned and talented young composer is Sam CS and after ruling hearts across Tamil Nadu he is making a noteworthy impression in Tollywood as well. This is the second song in a very short span that is getting featured from the same movie so that itself is a great feat for any composer. One of the best components of the son is the percussions and that start straight away so Prithvi deserves praise for that. Joseph Vijay is like the song’s hero in my opinion for he plays a startling number of instruments like the Spanish guitar, solo and dobro, slide guitar, bass guitar, electric guitar, Mandolin, Bouzouki and guitar body rhythms as well. The song reminds of me some very famous numbers during the Harris Jayaraj days, like “Anda kakka konda kaari”. Nakul Abhyankar, a musician I respect and am fond of does the male vocals with Haripriya as the female lead vocalist. She too has been burning red hot in Tollywood over the last couple of years especially with DSP’s compositions. Naveen Iyer plays the flute in a song which is dominated by string instruments and ‘Chennai Orchestra’ performs the strings with Balaji conducting it. I am not sure but I sense some influence of Raag Kaapi in Carnatic. Nakul plays the Keys other than his vocals as well, and the track is mixed and mastered by David Selvam, with Abhishek AR, CD Abumani on recording. The music production manager is K Mahima Chowdhary , with Bhuvana Ananth as the music supervisor.  Kalyan Chakravarthy is the lyricist.

12. Paagal Dil

I have interviewed Srihari Jagannathan, the front man of Chennai Street Band, and he is one hardworking guy who juggles between a corporate job and indie music. They are about to release their album “Uplift” and this is the 4 song from that. The song apparently is an ode to 90s kids and is about #firstlove. In that interview Srihari mentioned Kajinder Srivastava and how he wrote songs for the band with immediacy and splendid efficacy, here too he is the songwriter. Taking us into nostalgia with his words. The concept and story comes from Srihari who has also composed and performed vocals , and the team of Adarsh Panicker and Sugandha Bansal have done the mighty impressive Animation and illustration. The band has some amazing musicians well known in the southern indie space like Goutham Healer on drums and percussion arrangements, Adithya Gopi on bass guitars, Akshay Yesodharan and Renin Raphael on acoustic and electric guitars respectively. The song gets an uplift (pun unintended) thanks to some splendid live instrumental arrangements. The guitars are like the bedrock for the track and the notes are clearly nostalgic of the 1990s thanks to the pure melody. Sebastian Satish and Srihari do the production with Sarthak Ray on additional production. “Anjana ehsas hai” I love the line, very relatable to some of the Bollywood music we heard back in 90s, like “Pehla Nasha”. Vivek Thomas has mixed and mastered this with very careful attention and mastery, with mix assistants being Rahul Narayan and Subhajit Pandit. Lijesh Kumar does the recording.

13. Runaway 

Sejal is a You-tube sensation but it wasn’t for her singing, she and is a Vlogger of immense fame. But when she released her singles, part of her album called “Shy” they did connect with listeners and I have featured her before with songs like “Influence” and “Destinty”. IN this 7-track album I finally did like “Runaway”, and this one unlike the others doesn’t have a pop touch and she combines with writer Natania Lalwani in jointly penning the words and her producer is Austin Armstrong. This was a more Latin Flamenco, as one can feel a Santana styles electric guitar from time to time with some rhythms also making it sound in the Flamenco style. The super talented indie musician Saptak Catterjee has vocally engineered the track and the influence is visible in Sejal’s vocals.

14. Falling for you

Only a few weeks ago I featured music by Pradeep Mathews (who has worked on other songs in the EP) when he worked with Mr. Miyagi ( him too) for a wonderful song. Here we have Pruthvi Dhawale with wonderfully emotive and pleasant EP and I even love the title “Songs about you (Not for you)”. Pruthvi has composed, written and performed every track, and this one caught my attention the most. The song has very strong vocals that impinge on you with the guitars mildly playing. The hurt, vulnerability when she sings “ Im falling for you” really gets to you, and takes you back to all our relationship ghosts of the past. Nathan Thomas has mixed, mastered and produced this gentle giant of a track and he gets every element spot on. It is Ron Cha on the Keys and Mitchell Murray on the fantastic and thumping drums, he has tremendous control of when to ante things up and slow down and almost vanish. Crehyl who is a Keyboardist, plays the Strings for this one. Aria and Ashyar Balsara have done the Dolby mix. The artwork is by Pranav Marde. The song as it gets towards the end has both a calming and adrenaline-pumping effect on you.

15. Kitaab

both a The last song of this week is about turning a page, opening a new chapter in life and so on, and nothing spreads philosophy better than a catchy song with good lyrics. This is what “Kitaab” is and the song is composed by and produced by Gravero and Happy Pills with vocals by Dikshant who has also written the lyrics. Veerdo does the mix and master. The Sitar is brilliant as a programmed sound with the rhythms accompanying and giving a classical-EDM fusion. The pause that Dikshant makes is priceless and after which there is small vocal grunt and the Sitar once again begins to create a wonderful effect.