In Walk of the Bride/Seetha Kalyana Vaibhogame, when Harish ends his opening and the music starts at the 2-minute mark, you know you are listening to an Agam song! The idea to fuse the Tamil wedding styled music usually featuring nadaswaram and thavil with Kerala styled chenda, kuzhal, and elathalam is a lovely touch that works wonders. The band’s signature is all over the song and the embellishment they add to the incredibly familiar melody, derived out of a Thyagaraja kriti set to Shankarabharanam raaga, is spellbinding. While Praveen Kumar gets a superb phrase to shine, OK Gopi’s Nadaswaram layer too makes the second interlude come alive with the chenda melam ensemble. The chorus-led ending is another touch that works wonderfully.
The Silence That Remains (Mokshamu Galada) is a splendidly modern reimagination of Thyagaraja’s Saramati raaga based composition. The song, which starts almost like a world music track with guttural chants, has Agam choosing to open with the Anupallavi, instead of the Pallavi. It also gets a jolt of electricity in the central one-and-a-half-minute musical exposition. The band brings everything together wonderfully in the charaNam, but does something even more interesting in the last one-and-a-half minutes with the outro – while the vocal chorus offers a serene callout, the music that flows after that is ethereal in the finest sense!
Shadows of Time is a surprising turn even by Agam’s already lofty standards. The song is soaked in such abject despondence, lyrically, that it almost turns into an elegy! The incredibly appropriate use of Charukesi raaga, with the dramatically grand orchestration (Czech National Symphony Orchestra), makes the lamentation even more searing. Swamy Seetharaman’s Tamil verse deserves particular mention. He writes long, tonally aligned sentences that Harish has a stupendous time enunciating within the raaga’s construct. Like, “Koodi Magizhndhu Kaadhal Malarndhu Paarvai Tholaindha Pin Paarvai Izhantha KaalangaLin PayaNam”.
Flight to the Summer Sky is absolutely magnificent! Agam blends Tyagaraja’s Abheri raaga-based Nagumo and Bharathiyar’s Bhimpalasi raaga-based VeLLai Thaamarai, denoting Goddess Saraswati, to create a spellbinding mixture. Since the raagas are essentially same (Carnatic vs. Hindustani traditions), they complement each other beautifully when Harish makes the switch mid-way into the song, but not before adorning the transition with a phenomenally creative soul-tinged vocal chorus! The extended (almost one minute) prelude of the song is a marvel by itself, fusing temple-style rudram chants, a ‘Close your eyes’ whispery callout, and Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt’s Mohan Veena, which almost ‘talks’ to us all through the song. The outro is a beauty too, using vocal chorus and synths in a heady combination.
Between Doubt and Destiny plays like a short companion piece to Shadows of Time, but is significantly darker and angrier, as if the despondence of the previous track morphed into rage, and eventually powering action! And yet, all that rage is channeled wonderfully through raaga PanthuvaraLi. The song features a superb opening stretch that literally growls us into attention. Swamy’s words are hugely imaginative and visual: “ThoLirandai Siragaakki, Kaalirandai Thuduppaakki”!
Twenty Two years later, with only their third studio album out now, Agam has sealed a solid legacy with the kind of music they consistently produce. Their musical style has a remarkably identifiable signature despite many other bands emulating it in the years since, including Thaikkudam Bridge, Masala Coffee, among others. But that’s precisely Agam’s legacy too – to create a style that is looked upon, is inspiring, and emulated. Arrival of the Ethereal may be a short 5-track album, but the sheer effort that has gone into sculpting each track shows. A magnificent album!
Listen to the album:
