8.12.2007

Bheema Sondtrack

Harris Jeyaraj is the one with highest success rate among his contemporaries. The reason is that he constantly delivers songs with simple, easy, catchy rhythms and melodies that instantly hook the casual listeners. Who cares about innovation and experimentation? What a casual moviegoer or a casual music listener wants is an immediately head shakable tune and that is what Harris delivers again and again with utmost success. Harris’s songs are crowd pleasing spoon feeds than ground breaking experimentations. The maximum experiment you can find in his songs is the way he uses different meaningless vocal sounds and words instead of a humming or a ‘lalala’ version of the tune in the interludes and preludes.

Apart from the fact that Harris is in fine form in Bheema, what I am surprised the most about is the beauty of songs with simple and minimal orchestration and clearly audible lyrics. No song has too many instruments or sounds or loops overlapping. At the maximum you can listen four layers running in parallel and that applies even to the only folk number ‘Rangu Rangamma’ (which usually is deliberately made to be loud) in an otherwise all-melody soundtrack. Infact Harris throws some surprises in this song by going completely western classical in the interludes which is otherwise a folk number.

One big relief is that I didn’t get a sounds-like feel in any of the songs in the soundtrack which was an ordinary thing to happen when you listen to a Harris’s soundtrack for the first time. Also there are no usual Harris’s clichés like club beats or stylized singing except for few strange humming here and there. The hero introduction songs of Harris’s are always unusually more techno and sophisticated than any others and like ‘Karka Karka’ from ‘Vettaiyadu Vilayadu’, ‘Oru Mugamo’ is an effective hero introduction song without much ado. Krish definitely is coming out of his effeminate singing style and this song is a proof of it.

It is good to hear singers like Hariharan in two pleasant melodies of the soundtrack. So ‘Enadhuyirae’ is the long promised song in Harris’s composition for the Airtel super singer winner ‘Nikhil Mathew’. He makes an impressive debut. But why the breathing sounds in between the lines are so deliberately and distractingly loud. Is it to prove that the singers have sung these lines in a single take without punches or is it the side effects of having a crystal clear sound mix?

Harris’s Bheema is a strong and solid hit material.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's not awful. It's not great. In today's industry, would say it is slightly above passmark. Though don't know how those 'kuthu' loving B&C folks will take to it.
I got a bit impatient with it. Maybe, just all the monotony of the songs these days. Enadhuyire went in a loop, as I liked the lyrics and wanted to hear how Nikil Mathew sang it. Otherwise, I guess, another album that will last as long as the film does...?

-kajan

P.S. Suresh Kumar said...

Kajan - Accept. That is what I also intend to tell but wasn't so harsh this time. Infact i found so many sounds-like is repeated listenings, Monotounous has become a synonymous with Harris's music these days

Anonymous said...

"Ragasiya Kanavugal" sounds like an Iyappan song! :-)

P.S. Suresh Kumar said...

May be, it is because of the rhythm and percussions used....

jeevagv said...

Thanks Suresh, I will give it a try!

Directhit said...

as u urself say, u didnt wanna be harsh i guess by saying "didn't get a sounds-like feel in any of the songs"
OTOH all i cud hear was paartha mudhal naale/suttum vizhi/ari gori song of HJ and many rahman songs - i liked enadhuyirae and ragasiya song in the album.

did u listen to Sivi movie songs - far better than this!

P.S. Suresh Kumar said...

anoop - true, what is the point in shouting the same again and again and to be fair, my memory becomes so bad, that these days i am getting hooked to such mediocrities.... I am not able to find a CD of Sivi music anywhere.... i just could take this, when is music industry going to learn abt marketing and sale... like how arjun saying, 'kadaisila ennayum arasiyalvaathi aakitaangalae', i feel saying, ' kadaisila ennayum netla irundhu thiruda vechirvanga polirukkae'

Smile
Sureshkumar

jeevagv said...

Mudhal Mazhai was a better one of the rest for me!

Solo Saarangi and
Solo Violin were nice to hear but on the whole (considering everything including singers and their pronunciation) - the performance is below average!