Milliblog Weeklies – India’s only multilingual, weekly new music playlist.
Week 130: On | On
10 songs, this week too, like last week. Both YouTube and JioSaavn have all 10 songs this week too!
Karle Trip, Raavan, Baithi Hai & Chale Hai – Songs of Trance (Amit Trivedi) – Hindi/Indipop: After Songs of Faith, Amit explores trance in his own Hindi-film style way. The combination seems perfectly at ease with his film music repertoire. In Karle Trip, Amit layers in a folk percussion later in the song that takes it to a new high, while in Shilpa Rao and Anand Bhaskar power Raavan’s hypnotic sound where the folk string is the stand-out. Baithi Hai is the album’s best, with its lush melody that seemed like Puria Dhanashri raag to me. While the song’s soundscape is fantastic, it is Sharmistha Chatterjee who leads it in style. Chale Hai is the most filmy in the album, with even a hint of 80s pop, and very well sung by Poorvi Koutish and Hriday Gattani.
Qareeb – Kamakshi Khanna (Indipop/Hindi): Besides Kamkshi’s bewitching singing quality and her own really alluring Latino-style tune, what also works for the song is Anhad + Tanner’s exquisite music production. I had written about the duo in August, about their album, In Other Words. Here, they amp up Kamakshi’s already fantastic material with their sound.
Amrutha – Solo Brathuke So Better (Thaman S) – Telugu: A very, very typical Thaman-style earworm! The song could have easily been part of say, Ala Vaikunthapuramulo… it’s as sassy and rhythmic! Nakash Aziz delivers the song with enough style and the instrumental hooks too are very catchy (partly because Thaman also uses them relentlessly).
Mizhinilavai – Grahanam (Anandhkumar G) – Malayalam: Vineeth Sreenivasan’s deeply involving voice powers this song effortlessly. Composer Anandhkumar’s tune seems to be based on Hamir Kalyani raaga, if I’m not mistaken. The ghazal’ish sound and the wonderful use of the tabla to propel the song works very well.
Mukto Kore Dao – Arijit Singh (Bangla/Indipop): This is the Bangla version of Arijit’s new Hindi single, Rihaa, about which I wrote last week. Arijit had written the minimal Bangla lyrics in the Hindi version, while he writes the entire song here. Very alluring melody and sung beautifully, as always.
Entha Muddo – Oneness (Saint Thyagaraja, Revathy Kumar & Guruprasad Subramanian) – Classical: Thyagaraja’s Entha Muddo is already a deeply affecting and incredibly resonant song, given its Bindu Maalini raaga base. What Revathy Kumar does to the song with her haunting rendition is outstanding! Not to be left behind, Guruprasad Subramanian’s music is scintillating, treating the source material with a brilliantly modern approach and adding on to the tune’s already phenomenal heft.
Dwaitamu – Equilibrium (IndoSoul) – Indipop/Classical: The new single from IndoSoul’s upcoming 4th album is a pulsating interpretation of Thyagaraja’s (the 2nd song from the man this week!) Reetigowlai raaga based song. While Vikram Vivekanand’s Guitar and Ramkumar Kanakarajan’s Drums add to modern, pulsating layer, it is, as always, Karthick Iyer’s gorgeous Violin that truly does the talking.
