I saw True Romance last night, the Uncut Director's Cut. I have to admit that except for the Quentin Tarantino association, I knew virtually nothing about the movie. Was taken aback by the Sonny Chiba references. Too many monologues abound - but hey, what's a Tarantino-scripted movie without monologues? Dennis Hopper waxes forth on Sicilians, Christopher Walken makes a chilling guest appearance, Christian Slater talks about Oscar movies, Sonny Chiba, Elvis Presley, James Gandolfini gets poetic about killing, and Tom Sizemore and Chris Penn get into detail about the how prison life contributes to a happy marriage. Probably the best Doctor Zhivago reference in any movie I've seen. What also struck me was the uncanny resemblence to some of the plot points in Preacher ( the comic book) - the "Mentor" appearances in the restrooms ( Val Kilmer played that? Wow! ), the way the characters Alabama Worley and Tulip O'Hare have this inherent ass-kicking ability inside themselves that manifests in odd, scary ways.



My DVD ( bought for 20 Rs in Kathmandu ) appears to have three commentary tracks, the deleted scenes and the alternate ending. Heard the first fifteen minutes of the Tarantino commentary today morning - yum!

Awesome music find of the week: Balligomingo. Luscious female vocals over soaring, lush electronic soundscapes.

The album Jun Ray Song Chan starts off with Hana, Japanese for flower. The song is nearly similar to Tsuginegi To Ittemita, staccato bursts of Japanese chanting processed electronically. There are two voices, a guy who sounds like he has had his vocal chords reworked with a heavy hammer, and a female voice that brings to mind a stoned J-pop singer. Backed with a melancholy violin melody and paced by the weirdest sounding tabla you will ever hear. And I mean a genuine tabla, not one of those electronic thingummijigs Talvin Singh uses. The combination makes for one very odd listen, especially when the chants are spliced and precisely echoes the tabla player's flourishes.

Just when I was done with Hana and was about to dismiss the band as a one-trick pony, 'Preach' kicks in. Starts off with a brass signature accompanied by squelching sounds. ( Did these people play a trumpet underwater? Man! ) Then the tabla goes mad for quite sometime - forcing me to reduce the volume on my speakers. Surprise, surprise, the squelching sounds turn out to be spoken voices! There is a sudden burst of an acoustic guitar in the proceedings. Where on earth is this song going?

'Kobana' begins with a mouth-organ solo, with the same chants from Hana playing in the background, only modified to a high pitch. This song is like a reworked version of the first song, the mouth organ melody being the focus here. A freaking eerie melody at that.

'Nigatsu' is the strum of an acoustic guitar in a thunderstorm. More creepy voices, but a more coherent ( and soothing) guitar melody. The more I listen to the chanting voices, the more they sound like chopped syllables from a random conversation. The guitar goes away completely at the end of the song, replaced by a tanpura and a sitar. And electronic phase riffs.

'Goo Gung Gung' is probably the most conventional Oriental arrangement. You do realise that the word "conventional" here is relative to the rest of the album? It's too short for my taste, as is the next track "Kutsu #2". ( Incidentally 'Kutsu' comes at the end of the album. )

The longest track in the album 'Jippun'is a frenzy of trippy electronic pitchshifting and kanjira ( Yes, Kanjira ) flourishes. At nine minutes and thirty three seconds, it's like the bastard child of Bjork and Zakir Hussain ODed on ecstasy and came up with this track. Ditto 'Tabla Bol (Catastrophe)', the second last song on the album.

And unless I am losing my mind, 'Kokoni Sachiari' has the same sample as the beginning of 'Beat of Passion' in ARR's Taal, the breathy whistle that starts BoP. It also has some sexily processed sitar sounds - sitar in an IDM track!! I didn't think I would see the day.


I had heard 'Tsuginegi to Ittemita' about four years ago, and was fortunate enough to come across a complete package of all of Asa Chan and Jun Ray's albums ( two in all, not counting an EP ). I don't think these folks are ever going to attain mainstream popularity any time, considering the kind of music they make. ANd there's not much information about them available online either, so I cannot even find out why so many Indian elements persist in a Japanese band. Do they play these instruments themselves or are they sampled? I am betting on the former, though.

Here's the video of Hana,in case you are interested.


Also on the playlist:

Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy - Johnny Gaddar OST
The Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur
Guitar Prasanna - Be the Change

I am a little troubled by AR Rahman's Jana Gana Mana. Not with the packaging - Times Music has released a beautiful CD+ DVD package, retailing at 399 Rs - but at the fact that the release is actually a RE-release. Everybody, including the Rahman experts seem to be ignoring that. And Rahman himself? The man who cried "foul" when Magnasound rereleased one of his private albums composed for Shubha, touting it as AR Rahman's first English Language album, the man who went on record and split with a company that had brought out his first albums is happily floating on the publicity machine.

I bought the cassette of Jana Gana Mana in February 2000, in Sangeet Saagar, Hyderabad. Agonised over buying the CD version, which came with a free VCD ( note the technological leap we have taken in the last seven years. VCDs are gone, baby, gone. ), but unfortunately was priced at 500 Rs. Over the years, I would wait for the CD to be released without the VCD, for prices to be slashed, for some kind of sale where I could get it cheaper. But nothing of that sort happened, and I never did get around to buying it.

Will I buy it now? Don't know really. 399 is still too high, in my opinion. The prices of DVDs are at an all-time low, with Moser-Baer cornering the market, and T-series releasing old favourites at 45 Rs. Even DVD stalwarts like Eros and Shemaroo are offering 99-Rs DVDs in a monsoon-sale offer, although their new offerings are still high-priced. I am betting prices will stabilise at around 150 Rs. Yashraj is the only company that is staying put at 300-plus prices, but who wants to buy YR DVDs anyway?

I believe there have also been a spate of Rahman "singles". 'One Love', which is an ode to the Taj Mahal and features the same song in *shudder* multiple languages, and 'Pray For Me Brother', which has a train-wreck of a video. These must be the first ARR albums that I have consciously refused to buy.

I think the best ARR tune in recent times is that new Airtel ad, in which a kid plays in the rain and there is this bouncy melody going on in the background. It lasts for about a minute, but gets me everytime. I am not even sure it's by ARR, but the voice and the music segue into the familiar Airtel tune and that's why I think it's him.

And oh, the DVD of Vishal's The Blue Umbrella is out. Even before the movie has been released in Hyderabad. Bah!

Also, a fabulous article on 15 Years of AR Rahman.

Isn't it irritating when a tune you hear reminds you of another bit of melody from some corner of your musical memory, and inspite of repeated attempts to map the older tune, its just impossible to figure out where it's from?

This happened to me with 'Sahana'/'Sahara', one of the songs in Sivaji, present on the CD in two versions - one by Udit Narayan and Chinmayee ( the lady who sang 'Tere Bina' in Guru), and the other by Vijay Yesudas and Gopika Poornima. The opening tune was SO SO familiar when I heard it, but I distinctly remembered hearing the tune on orchestral violins, and a number of times over the last couple of days, I tried humming it to myself to figure out where exactly I had heard it. Was able to pinpoint it to the correct genre, it was definitely from a piece of Indian film music, and knowing Rahman, it was from one of his earlier compositions. That was as far as I got, until just now, the skies opened and I knew what the tune was.

It was the closing theme of Dil Se, a melancholy tune that was my ringtone for a couple of months back in 2003 or thereabouts. It creeped out quite a few people in my office, but I loved it, and even downloaded a proper mp3 version when I could. And that also explains why I didn't figure out a Rahman tune - background soundtracks are excluded from the RAT ( Rahman Acknowledgement Time) factor. I still win!

The feeling of relief I have now is like the aural version of the experience of having removed a bit of food stuck in your teeth after dinner.

Just when the music of Sivaji: The Boss was on the verge of taking over my life, I found The Best of Apache Indian at Music World today. For those who are interested, its pretty tough to get CDs of the original No Reservations anywhere at a decent price - I had seen a copy in Landmark, Chennai for 525 INR, and some copies at secondspin.com for 3.99$. But I am off secondspin for now, so this album is the only sensible way to go. It collects the representative hits of Apache Indian, the album hits Chok There', 'Boom Shaka-Lak', 'Arranged Marriage', the collaborations 'No Problem' and 'Yeh Ladka Hai Allah', from Asha Bhosle's Rahul and I. And it's only 125 INR, and I was megapissed when this went off the market about a month after it came out sometime in 2005 - just after I had made up my mind to buy a copy. So, hoo-ah!

Top Shelf comics is celebrating its fifth anniversary with a major, MAJOR sale. There is a 3$ sale for books like Jose Villarubia/Alan Moore's The Mirror of Love ( which retails for 20$), Alex Robinson's Tricked ( ditto), the Blankets soundtrack ( retail price 15$), all the volumes of Bughouse, which selll for 15$ each. GODDAMNIT! It's a bad, bad time to be an obsessed collector.

And my computer at home is humped. Totally. I think the power supply's gone bust.

Junji Ito is messing with my head.

Junji Ito who? A horror creator from Japan. Known primarily for a series called Uzumaki (Spiral in English, also made into a not-so-good movie) and for Tomie. Tomie. I read scans of this series a couple of years back. Fairly gruesome story about a drop-dead beautiful girl (heh heh heh) named Tomie, who has the power to make people obsess over her, and ultimately, kill her.

Except, Tomie does not stay dead easily. She regenerates, inspite of having been hacked and slashed and dismembered and, in one mega-sicko sequence, being ground to a paste and mixed with Sake. She regenerates, and sometimes, most of the time, actually, she comes back in ways that are extremely distressing to an unsuspecting manga fan who is having his dinner. Take my word for it.

The scans I had read before were from this defunct company called Comicsone, and the translations weren't too good. Dark Horse comics has taken to reprinting all of Junji Ito's works in a series called Museum of Horror, and I recently bought volume 2. Excellent stuff, more so because in this volume Ito's art seems much more polished than the early Tomie stories. Now to find volumes 1 and 3.

You can read a complete Junji Ito horror story right here.

* * *

Gaurav got a bunch of my stuff back from the States. A Sergio Aragones Groo pin-up, a Harry Roland Vampirella painting, a Tony Harris Starman page, and a 2-page Kevin Maguire splash page from Gen-13/Fantastic Four( my first double-page splash! Woo Hoo!). The splash page had some of the most detailed inking I have ever seen, I spent a good half an hour just looking at the intricacies. Apart from the artwork, he got back the complete Hellboy collection, the first three volumes of Lady Snowblood, quite a bit of Ellis - all of which were part of Brady's collection that I had purchased this year, most of which is still at 2fargon's place in the States. I finished the Hellboy volumes sometimes yesterday - started them in the airport the day before. Yes, I was travelling.

* * *

How was the last year for me? Very trippy. Right from Jan 1st, 2006, half of which I spent in Bangalore airport, I seem to have been travelling like mad. I cannot remember more than one or two weekends in the first three months of this year when I was in Hyderabad. None of these trips were too restful, except for a Mumbai trip in April, where I spent three and a half days in invigorating company, and the last week of the year, which was my Back To Basics trip. I nearly ended up spending half of 31st December in an airport too, but I didn't mind it one bit, nosirreebob.

In case you haven't been following the LJ too obviously, last year was also the year of Original Art. ( 2004 was the year of The Comic Book, 2005 the year of The DVD ) Technically, I bought my first pieces on 25th December 2005, but in 2006, the acquisition of my first Quitely page broke the 200$-eBay-barrier. I slacked off sometime in the middle of the year, but then I had this life-altering conversation with a friend, sometime in September, about why he is going to collect original comicbook art, and only original art, after he graduates. There was a flash of light, in which I realised how right he was. And from then, there was no looking back.

It was also, in a slighter degree, the year of a near-complete comicbook collection. I bought out a collection from someone in the US, and effectively that has put an end to fervent searches and snipes on eBay. I am contented. For now.

A depressing year, as far as new music goes. Apart from the fact that my sister gifted me an iPod shuffle, there has not been any hallelujah-worthy moment in music for me, this year. (Yes, that's right, I have become a jaded old fucker. Rape me, my friends. Which reminds me that I waded through Nirvana's discography sometime back. Excellent rush of happy memories that was. ) No, hold on, let me remember some music-worthy moments from last year...

- The live Zero-7 video that Vasu showed me, that made me go and listen to all of Zero-7 for a couple of days.
- Listening to this band from Nepal called Nepathya, who do rock versions of traditional songs from around the Himalayas. Infectious!
- Rediscovering DJ Krush, who I had heard a little bit of in 2005.
- Siddharth singing 'Appudo Ippudo' from Bommarilu, Shreya Ghoshal on the songs of Anukakonda Oka Roju, and, most important of all, 'Dole Dole' from Pokiri.
- All the adgy mixes.
- Kailash Kher's Kailasa, the live DVD as well as the CD.

Hmm, seems like there might be a mixtape in the offing after all...

The first half of the year, I took this rather drastic measure of choosing to ignore ALL blockbuster movies that are released. It was meant to be a one-year abstinence from all things corporate-Hollywood-and-Bollywood-ish, but the idea got chucked somewhere along the way. I did not watch too many movies either ways - probably the fact that Sympathy For Lady Vengeance did not impress me as much early this year has something to do with it. The ones I saw were reruns of the ones I saw before. Repeat viewings rock, don't they?

About the rest of what went on in my life, well, all of you who know me already know about what's going on, so do I really need to write it all down? The rest of you will have to make do, I guess.

* * *

Right now, I have in front of me the following - Pride of Baghdad and Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, both hardcover. Genshiken volume 3 - I had bought volumes 4 and 5 yesterday on the last day of the Odyssey sale. DVDs of Pitamaghan, Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu, Anjali, and Jillanu Oru Kaadhal. A neat Hitman page, drawn by John McCrea and inked by Gary Leach, featuring the last appearance of Sixpack, that I picked up from the post office today morning. Ramesh Menon's Mahabharata is occupying my nightly hours.

Ain't life grand?

Because I am bored.

The rules: No Indian, Icelandic or Japanese music. No instrumentals. All information valid through the last couple of week, hence not much thought, and all rankings/lists liable to change without notice or fanfare. A tip of the hat ( Hat? what hat?) to sonataindica for the idea.

( Read more... )

Did I mention that my discman died two weeks ago? My faithful companion since 2001 ( or possibly 2000, considering that it was originally absolut_69's baby that I stole away and paid him six months later), my ecape valve during final year examinations, Sunny Deol-infested bus journeys, my PRECIOUS little precious finally gave up. Was bound to happen, but I am not giving up easily. It's off for repairs now, and the guy at the service center ( unauthorized, the Philips guys said they don't repair discmans, especially not the Expanium, and DEFINITELY not this model.), the guy said the lens needs to be changed. I don't have too much hope of it working for more than a year, new lens or not, and I am pretty sure it won't be able to read any of my older Frontech mp3 CDs. But no matter. I am not giving up on you easily, precious.

It's one of those unacknowledged laws that whenever you lack the means to listen to music, your urge to listen to music increases dramatically. I have been spending my free time ( Ha ha ha) revisiting some CDs that I hadn't heard in quite sometime. Travis, Moby's Play, Dixie Chicks, Bad Company, Jethro Tull, Van Morrison, Cowboy Junkies. Loads of Suzanne Vega too.

Has it ever happened to you that you hear a song, and then don't hear it for a long time, and when you hear it again, it sounds completely different from what you had thought it sounded, in terms of the orchestration and the arrangement? That happened to me with Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, a song which I keep remembering because of the opening lyrics, that go - If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream, where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop - Could you find me? Would you kiss my eyes? - the imagery just kills me, man. I heard it after a long time, and was really, really taken aback to find that it was not really as guitar-driven as I remembered it was.

And now for some venom.

I think it was V For Vendetta that did it, finally, but I realised that the ratio of returns to investment has been mindblogglingly low for all the movies I've seen in theatres this and the last year. Movies that I've loved and enjoyed, like Sin City, Hostel, The Devil's Rejects, even The Corpse Bride have no chance of attaining theatrical releases in India. What do we get? Pap. Bile-inducing insults to my brain. Pixellated eye-candy with six tracks of digitized nonsense. So I say, enough. No more movies in theatres. No more paying inflated prices to be mentally assaulted for 90 to 180 minutes, and with cellphone ringtone interruptions too, to boot. Especially comicbook movies. I have been completely uninterested in Superman Returns ever since yada yada yada and I am not really interested in talking about it, thank you. If you see it and you like it, well, I am happy for you. Obviously you haven't been reading Doom Patrol or All Star Superman, so I can't really say I am too happy for you, but yeah, you should know that I have absolutely no problems with you watching Superman Returns. Nope, none at all. Not a teensy weensy bit. Honest.

The trailer for Spiderman 3? Not interested. Ghost Rider? Pah! 300? Ditto. Nacho Libre? Well, yeah, interested, but I don't think it's coming to theaters here, so there!

I was also more than a little pissed off because the last copy of Hanzo The Razor available at secondspin.com got sold off this week, as did the two copies of Varttina's Miero. GRRRAH! My credit card's maxed out, so I couldn't pick it up. CD-WOW still has it, but it's almost twice the price.

I am a man of taste. I shall now go home and listen to Himesh Reshammiya until I fall asleep. I have a presentation to make tomorrow morning. Er, today morning. I am in such an ebullient mood (Part of the reason: Roger Ebert gave Superman Returns two stars. I don't really like the guy, but that didn't stop me from grinning a lot on reading his review) that my technical presentation has taken on shades of a standup comedy routine. Wish me luck.

Ah well, I had forgotten that I didn't update my mix mp3 post with the names of the songs. The songs represented a major part of my work-music, and my late-night playlist - that happens to be the theme of the collection, by the way. With the exception of one or two, which I knew had to be on the list, they were all very tough selections for me. What do you select from an album that gives you so much pleasure as a singular entity? Is each song a mindblowing experience on its own or is it the cumulative after-effects of the song that preceded it and the one that will follow? And then the order, should song A become track 2 or is it better as an end-track? Should this song come before that one, and what should follow it? Decisions, decisions....

Took me about 8 hours of continuous listening to the 20 songs I selected, before deciding on the final thirteen, and the order.

The tracks, then.

Track 1: Queen of All Ears by The Lounge Lizards. These guys were supposed to be proficient in "fake jazz" when they began twenty years ago, which is just a way of saying that they played whatever they felt like, with surprisingly melodious results. This track "Queen of All Ears" is the fifth in their 1998 album of the same name, the name taken from Jimi Hendrix's liner notes to Electric Ladyland "And on he walked until after crowning Ethel the dog the Only Queen of Ears...".The rest of the songs on the album are mindbogglingly good as well, but what drew me to this track is the Indianness of the lead instrument. What, you didn't notice?

Track 2: Do The Whirlwind by Architecture in Helsinki. My favourite band of the year, one that really unsettles you and forces you to listen to their music. This Australian band has released two albums so far - the first, Fingers Crossed (described as "eight people playing 14 songs in 37 minutes with 31 instruments") was released in 2003, and the next, In Case We Die, from which this track is taken, in 2005. The song wins my vote for the catchiest song of 2005, bar none.

Track 3: Summer by Joe Hisaishi. While much has been written ( and said) about Hisaishi's collaborations with Hayao Miyazaki, his collaborations with film-maker Takeshi Kitano are equally magical - piano-laced melodies, mellow instruments tinged with just the right amount of pathos. This track is from a very unlikely Kitano work, the story of a young boy who goes on a trip, during his summer vacation, to find his mother. The main piano line is infectious, I once heard this track over and over again between 7 PM and 3 AM, just because I could not get the main piano line out of my mind.

Track 4: Horizon - The Cinematic Orchestra - I completely dig the percussion line in this song, the clean sound of the jazz drums and the way the conga drums kick in at 2 minutes 48 seconds and go completely berserk for the next 40 seconds. I also love the bass line. And the female voice. And the organ motif that repeats after every eighth bar. Most of the other Cinematic Orchestra tracks do not have vocals in them, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, trust me.

Track 5: Assassin's Tango - John Powell (from the Mr and Mrs Smith score) - Mr and Mrs Smith was one of these movies that made me fall asleep in the theater after the interval - there is just so much oozing coolness one can take, even in a Hollywood blockbuster. But just like the other cool yawn-inducer of the year (Ocean's Twelve, in case you weren't paying attention), MaMS had a very..er...cool background score, markedly lacking in cliched orchestral cues and sweeps. Case in point, this track.

Track 6: Green Grass of Tunner - múm - I have already spoken about the band before, the other Icelandic outfit I love. This track was off their 2002 album Finally We Are No One, which was the first album of theirs I heard.

Track 7: Love Trap - Susheela Raman - Ok, so I could go completely berserk and write a huge account of how much Susheela Raman completely rocks and why I am sure I will buy all her albums this year, but I will let tandavdancer do the honours. ( They don't call me Beatzo Magnanimity Phreniac for nothing) The lad has stalked her in ways and means that put us lesser stalkers to shame. And that's a compliment, believe me.

Track 8: Ba Ba - Sigur Ros - This is a band that takes the concept of musical layers to the nth degree. Little sounds chitter in your ears, strange twisted sonic collages that you might ignore at the first listen, hypnotized by the main melody but that break into your senses when you listen more carefully. Possibly the soundtrack to a dark fairy-tale.

Track 9: The Real Story - David Holmes (from the Ocean's Twelve soundtrack) - I don't think this track featured in the actual Ocean's Twelve tracklisting, and that means even I have no idea how it landed up with me. I love the way this tries to imitate the classic spy themes of the sixties and the seventies, like some kind of a bastard offspring of Schifrin-Hayes-Norman, without going overboard.

Track 10: Yekermo Sew - Mulatu Astatke ( from the Broken Flowers soundtrack) - While I haven't seen Jim Jarmusch's latest movie ( I should buy it, now that the DVD is in National Market), the soundtrack, which boasts of an impressive range of Jazz-tinged tracks by not-too-well-known World Music artistes, had been playing in my room quite a number of times this year. Selecting this track, from out of the others, was a chore - all of them are that good.

Track 11: Islandisk - Rinneradio - My friend from Finland, who is now wading around in lakes in his hometown at minus fifteen degrees, introduced me to a lot of Finnish bands during his trip to India ( on the upside, I introduced him to Varttina, heh) and Rinneradio was one of my favourites. Prog jazz with electronic influences, the band's huge in the Finnish music scene.

Track 12: Oceans Apart - Julie Delpy - Sasi thinks that the whole collection was a buildup to this song. Heh, I wish I could tell him it was not so. Heh heh, just kidding. Fact is, after I finished watching Before Sunset, I just let the DVD menu play over and over again, just to hear this song - and proceeded to get absolutely mad at myself for not being able to find this song anywhere. Of course, when I did, I went a little loony for sometime. Watch the movie, if you haven't already; you will know what I mean. What a voice, what a song!

Track 13: The Real Folk Blues - Yoko Kanno - Probably, without having watched the TV series Cowboy Bebop, you won't understand why this song is a perfect one to end a CD. Hearing this song play on the end credits of every episode is almost like exhaling after holding your breath after a long time, a head rush of sorts. Yoko Kanno, people, remember the name.

Right, that's it then. Now I need to figure out an effortless way to upload large volumes before I can think of preparing the next instalment of mixes.

Mix-tapes are fun. Mix CDs even more so. Mix mp3s? Dunno. Thought I would give it a try. Before packing my stuff ( yes, I am going back to Hyderabad. Jan 1st. What a cool way to start the New Year!) , I chose, not so randomly, 13 tracks that rocked my world in 2005. The attempt was not just to select "favourite" tracks, but also to get some kind of a cohesive listening order out of the playlist, to make it seem like it's an actual mood CD. Truth be told, the music does not stick to a particular mood, but I like to believe that there is a...umm...pattern to the selection. No, nothing trivia/funda based. Had to leave out a lot of tracks that would have sounded great as standalone tracks, or maybe in another mix, but were not in sync with the theme of this compilation. Not all these songs were released this year, it's just that I heard them this year, and heard them quite a few times - mostly after 1 AM in the night.

A zip file of the thirteen tracks can be downloaded here, and the individual tracks are here.

The best way to listen to the tracks would be in order, so I would really advise you to download the zip file, unzip the lot, and enqueue in your favourite player. If you are wondering why there are no ID3 tags or titles to the songs, that's just my way of handling individual prejudices. But yeah, I will give out the tracklist and the artistes sometime soon.

By the way, Pandora.com says that I like music with mild electronica influences, subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, a vocal-centric aesthetic, and horn/woodwind passages. I am kind of upset about the words "mild" and "subtle", guess I can never be an extreme kind of a person. *sigh*

It's s a good day when you find a Detective Moochwala collection - one of those Lost Childhood Treasures - in a forgotten corner of a bookshop. Getting it for twenty rupees is an added bonus, true.

This is the part I go into a nostalgia session about Target and Ajit Ninan Matthew and Mooch and Pooch and names like Besan Lal and Bhujiya Singh and Inspector Doodhmalai, but what the heck, fuck it. I am not in the mood for nostalgia right now.

Another interesting find was a hardcover graphic novel called Retief!, based on a sci-fi series I had come across once on the Baen bookshelf. The character was created by a gentleman named Keith Laumer, and Baen has an interesting write-up on him, mirrored in the foreword to the graphic novel. What interested me more than anything else was the artist - Dennis Fujitake - whose earlier collaboration with Jan Strnad, a comic about a dog-faced alien named Dalgoda was another Lost Childhood Treasure, picked up at second (and first) hand bookshops in Guwahati. Fujitake's style is a clean, warm cross between Moebius's linework on The Incal and Varley's soft colours on Ronin (in Dalgoda, that is. This one is black-and-white.) Yummy!

I heard Ranjit Barot's soundtrack to Holiday last night, from a colleague's MP3 CD I whacked. Awesome stuff, really, and just to prove that I support good music regardless of its non-Rahman antecedents, went and bought the CD at lunchtime today. All the songs sung by very aptly-chosen singers - Ranjot Barot's vocals on 'Aashiyan' worth the price of the CD alone. A quick look at the liner notes - not too much of it, unfortunately; too many pictures of Dino Morea and whoever that lady is, along with a couple of obligatory beach-babes in bikinis and a happy-grinny family - reveals that the saxophone solos were by Raghav Sachar. This uncanny Sax-man is the multi-instrumentalist who released a catchy remix album about a year back, full of instrumentals of Asha Bhonsle cabaret numbers, and one that I cannot seem to find anywhere anymore. His latest album sounded very electronic the first time I sampled it, so wasn't too interested. Acoustic drums by Mr Barot himself, flute by Navin. Dominique Carejo's voice appears on a semi-English song, which gets very embarassingly Celine Dion at times, but manages to stay right in the groove. The bulk of the female vocals are by Shreya Ghoshal, and the lady's rocksteady success rate is starting to scare me. All in all, an album that manages to stay in tune without veering into item-number territory. Market logistics dictate the presence of an obligatory dance remix of 'Aashiyan', however, and DJ Nasha does the ...umm...honours.

Confirmed news of the Rang De Basanti music release came in at 1:30 PM, from Vasu, who informed me that Sudhir had bought the CD on the way to the office, in the morning.

On the way to Planet M, I told myself that there was a fair chance this might be the CD that breaks the 200 Rs price barrier, and I talked myself into agreeing that I would NOT buy it if it were so. Well, it wasn't. 160 Rs, 10 songs. What makes me crack up is that I also saw the CD of Rajkumar Santoshi's Family, on sale for the same price, along with a couple of songs from Khakee included. Would really like to know how well sales of that soundtrack fares...

First Impressions:

Current count: two listens. And counting.

Begins with a one-and-a-half-minute Punjabi track 'Ik Onkar' which is all vocals ( songer: Harshdeep Kaur). Neat mutitracking. The title track, by Daler Mehndi and Chitra comes next - though pretty catchy, I thought it a trifle too long. The banjo beginning was not a banjo after all - sounds like a very familiar (Korg?) sample. 'Paathshaala', both the normal and the remix version ( which guest-stars Blaaze) is the kind of dance song that you really cannot dance to. I sincerely hope Blaaze's version stays on the album and does not appear in the film. Boys was the pinnacle of his career - let's leave it at that. 'Khalbali' was the most interesting song - faux Middle-eastern percussion, faux Middle-eastern lilt to the singing, authentic Arabic lyrics/vocals by Rai singer Cheb Nacim ( Or is it some other Nacim? No idea, really), Rahman's grating accent when he sings it being the only minus to the song. I shan't let my occasional hatred for Madhushree's voice taint my judgement of the song 'Tu Bin Bataaye', but it sounds run-of-the-mill, really. ( Which means I will consider this the favourite song of the album after about two weeks.) Naresh Iyer's voice sounds fabulous on this song, though.

One good thing about the album is that it gets better, or seems to, at least, with every song. 'Khoon Chalaa' by Mohit Chauhan ( of Silk Route) is a soft ballad that would sound like a Silk Route number if you replace the violin with the recorder. Minimal percussion, orchestral strings, well-written lyrics. Two very acoustic guitar-driven songs round off the album - 'Luka Chhupi' by Lata Mangeshkar and ARR, which is decent. Would have been catchier with a different female voice, but I feel that about every Lata song nowadays, so nevermind. 'Roobaru' is radio-friendly 90's alt rock. The much-hyped Aamir Khan number, called 'Lalkaar', is more of a poetry recital, sounds like 'Unnodu Naan' from Iruvar than anything else, the words being nearly the same as "Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna" from the Legend of Bhagat Singh.

How's Rang De Basanti going to fare as far as the charts go? Not too much, I guess. Aashiq Banaaya Aapne will win the Filmfare Award for best music, probably best singer too, beating Salaam Namaste in a close race. Do I look like I fucking care?

I am a big fan of soundtracks. Not just Indian soundtracks, all kinds. I am just awed by the fact that music can be used, in the hands of a skilled composer, to augment the impact of a scene in a film. I love the way music can be used as subtext in a barebones storyline. In fact, half the reason I end up hating a movie is when the accompanying soundtrack is crock. ( Perfect examples: the recent assembly-line productions of Ram Gopal Verma's The Factory, which rely on over-the-top moodscapes to ruin half-baked storylines) Right now, there are three composers who are my personal Gods, people whose music make my day ( or night) anytime I listen to them.

On top is AR Rahman. Part of the reason why I like him, truth be told, is that I've grown up with his music. He was the nineties, for me, every year indelibly marked in my memory by a couple of Rahman albums. There really have not been too many Rahman soundtracks I cannot listen to at any given point of time, and there are few Rahman tunes I cannot recognise in the first seven seconds of the song playing within earshot. But yeah, his background scores are no great shakes - they are essentially reworked versions of his songs in that particular movie, played on a different instrument or in a different style, or a slower/faster tempo than the song itself. Very few Rahman-scored films of recent times had memorable scores, to be honest - the songs might be awesome, but that's all you remember after you finish the film, the songs, and not the music. And I don't think I was hallucinating when I heard the same snatch of music at the end of Swades and at a point in Mangal Pandey: The Rising. Of course I am a Rahman fan, you idjit, but faith that refuses to face the facts is not faith at all, as Albert Schweitzer once said and all that.

Second in the list, not because of quality - let me assure you that I am not comparing any of these three composers in any way, other than the fact that they make my earth move - is Ennio Morricone. I have been introduced really late to his music. Believe me, chances are - you haven't heard Ennio Morricone's music yet, true Morricone music, that is. Because, in the sixties and the seventies, when Morricone was composing kick-ass stuff, certain unscrupulous hacks in America, like Henry Mancini or Mantovani (that's right, I know I should not call them such derisive terms, but it's just their covers stunted my musical education. They have also done some good stuff in their days) did some lame-ass cover versions of his soundtracks, and just to show that people have lousy musical taste, these cover versions sold really well, and I suspect made their way up the Billboard Charts too. The cover versions didn't sound bad, just watered-down. Insipid music that did not have a tenth of the energy that the original Morricone versions did. What was so unique about Ennio Morricone's original compositions? I could rave about his quirky use of instruments, or the completely loony themes he came up with. A solitary twanging guitar, a wailing harmonica, the sound of a jew's harp, shrieking human voices - Morricone did not need the grandeur of a string orchestra to come up with the soundscapes needed for a brutal desert shoot-out or a blood-splattered night. Or for that matter, a tenderly-shot love scene.It's not like he never used string orchestras either,;he did, and very beautifully too, in later day classics ( Wolf, Once Upon a Time In America, Cinema Paradiso). This man made the most memorable oboe piece in cinematic history - 'Gabriel's Oboe', from The Mission. He's composed nearly six hundred soundtracks so far, and has managed to repeat himself in only two of them. Pure genius, I say.

Of late, I have stumbled upon ( not by chance, to be honest) Morricone's scores for Italian Giallo movies - Dario Argento's Cat O'Nine Tails, for example, and Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik. Awesome, goosepimply scores. I have much to thank Kill Bill for, and rediscovering Ennio Morricone is one of the reasons.

Third in the list is a lady whose music I heard people raving about so freaking much that I nearly went berserk trying to get hold of her stuff. Yoko Kanno is her name, and she's a Japanese composer who has done music for anime titles like Cowboy Bebop, Macross Plus, Earth Girl Arjuna, and Ghost in the Shell; Standalone Complex. There's one thing I need to make clear about Ms Kanno - you can never, EVER slot her into a genre, or even in two, or ten, or fifty seven. Absolutely no-no-No. Fine, so you listen to 'Tank', the theme music for Cowboy Bebop, and go "Ah, a Jazz-oriented composer, reminds me of brass bands of the forties.", and then you hear 'Live in Baghdad' off the same album, a song that can give Judas Priest a complex, it sounds so eighties hair metal.Right, so the next song happens to be 'Fantasie Sign', a song that begins like an Edith Piafish French ballad, leading to a 180 bpm Jungle beat that kicks your teeth out of shape if you have your speakers loud enough. Of course, there is 'Bindy', a faux-middle-eastern piece where an alto saxophone tries to sound really hard like a shehnai, and very nearly succeeds; followed by 'Forever Broke', which is a slide-guitar piece you might hear Johnny Winter playing on a really, really bluesy day.

Right. So maybe I went overboard trying to describe how hard Yoko Kanno's music cannnot really be described to anyone, you have to listen to it to figure out how much it rocks. And this is just one album, from out of a possible 7 albums accompanying Cowboy Bebop, with all its music as diverse as the genres from which this anime borrows its themes from. And then you have to listen to the rest of her work, each more audacious than the other. "Audacious without being pretentious" is the term I've heard someone use with regards to Yoko Kanno's body of work, and it strikes me as the perfect term to describe her.

To buy or not to buy?

I am seriously waiting for the music of Rang De Basanti to be released. Music by AR Rahman, of course. It's due sometime this week, and I really need to hear something more than the single line ( and that infectious banjo loop that plays along with it) on TV. The music of Water ( also by Rahman, and one that he called "the best work he has done so far" in an interview sometime back) has released on all the online radio stations, but I am not listening to it until the CD comes out.

Also tempted to buy Bluffmaster, even though I already have Trickbaby's album. Two Ranjit Barot albums have also come out - Pooja Bhatt's Holiday, the songs sound pretty decent, and another one called Brides Wanted that I saw last night in Planet M. But the 145-150 Rs tag on each of these CDs puts me off, I don't want to buy Hindi movie soundtracks just for a good track or two, and then two months later, find prices slashed to half.

Heard Susheela Raman's Music For Crocodiles playing at Habitat, and nearly ended up buying it. Saw the 445 Rs price tag and took the easy way out - ran home and listened to Love Trap(her previous album) for three days. That lady has a sexy voice, and she does some awesome music.

Also saw Trilok Gurtu's latest album Broken Rhythms, it has Huun Huur Tu and Gary Moore guest-starring on some tracks. Temptations, temptations....

You get all kinds of DVDs at National Market. Especially blockbusters, the kind of big-budget movies that go on to make a lot of money and win awards and all that. All three of the Lord Of The Rings movies have been available at National Market, and in different formats too. You can get the fullscreen versions, the widescreen versions, all three movies in one disc, all three movies PLUS Spiderman 1 and 2 on the same disc, or if you are really feeling adventurous, all three LotR movies and the three Harry Potter movies in the same disc.

Me? I was feeling a bit more adventurous.

( And a good thing I was, too. )

Other things I bought last week: The DVD of Dil Chahta Hai (2-disc Edition) The double disc edition brought out by Sony is fast going out of print, the only one I can see at the Planet M/Music World outlets now are a very pirated-looking single disc version that sells for 400 Rs. The 2-disc set cost me 500 Rs. The extra disc has got a couple of unmastered deleted scenes, a "making of" where everybody kisses everyone else's asses, and a couple of theatrical/TV trailers. Why did I buy it? Because I needed a version of DCH that has all the songs mastered properly. One with a proper image transfer ( T-series had brought out an atrocious VCD that totally sucked. I had a pirated VCD sometime back which was of better quality than this legit version, honest injun! )

And of course, I bought it because it's one of my favouritest movies, ever.

Also picked up a 256 MB GeForce card for the PC, and now I am playing the Punisher like crazy. One thing I loved about this game is the way they have brought in Ennis's scripts and characters, and in some cases, even the dialogue. Next Up: Half Life 2, and GTA: San Andreas.

Woo hoo, I bought 13 volumes of Blade of the Immortal off eBay for less than half the price. The total came to 99.88$, including shipping. Which makes me extremely happy, because Hiroaki Samura's manga was one of the items on my wishlist - the pencilwork alone elevates it to Godlike status. Dear Hallowed People at Landmark, you can now come kiss my ass.

An article on the Finnish band Varttina, about whom I posted quite a few weeks ago:

“We were scouring the world looking for just the right sound, and then one day we came across the album Ilmatar by Värttinä,” reminisced Nightingale at last week’s press conference in Toronto. “One listen to track six, a brilliant dark, piece, and we knew we had our sound.” ( for the Lord of the Rings musical)

I empathise, Mr. Nightingale, I really do.



Parents arrived last night. Spent quite sometime the last couple of days cleaning up the room; gave up trying to hide the DVDs at oddball places. And I hadn't got me a haircut too, bah!

But what the hey, they were quite accomodating about the Far Side collection, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Special collection, and the Mecha-Hulk statuette, and the Ultimate Matrix set, and the rest of the darn DVDs and books and comics and CDs. "At least we know where your money went." Ma got me the Bolton sketch (which looks awesome!) and the Englehart postcard, both of which had been delivered to my Guwahati address. They liked the house a lot, especially the fact that we have kept it quite clean and human-habitable. Now isn't that surprising?

Rob Dougan - Furious Angels
If you've ever heard the Matrix OST, tell me if you remember this track called Clubbed To Death. It starts off with gentle strings borrowed from Elgar's Enigma Variations, and then metamorphoses into a catchy orchestral beat-fest - with a piano solo interlude worth dying for. The gentleman who composed this piece was Rob D, D for Dougan - and Furious Angels is the album on which this song appears, along with a number of other vocal and instrumental pieces. Dougan's growling, raspy vocals, chunky beats, the swirling orchestral sounds create an ambience hard to describe - it's completely electronica one moment, making you bop your head to the rhythm, and then forces you to stop doing whatever it is you were doing and listen to a calm solo the next instant. Rousing stuff.

Mùm - Finally We Are No One

I learnt of this Icelandic band when I was out searching for resources about my favourite Icelandic artiste. A search for articles on Salon.com brought up an interesting piece about this band, and a free mp3. Got myself an album soon after, and boy oh boy, was it good or what. Two guys, two girls - the boys with interesting hardware and a weird aural signature, and the girls with cherubic voices, Mùm makes music that gives me goosepimples. "Liquid electronica" is a phrase I've heard somewhere about their music, and it's so bloody appropriate. Bursts of static, crackling loops that sound like they have been sampled from ancient vinyl albums, dreamy tunes, and the voices, my man, the voices. And it's not like you can listen to one song in a loop - it has to be the album, from beginning to end, that has to be heard again. And again.

This is where you can download some tracks ( I really haven't checked if they are samples or full tracks) by Mùm.

Architecture In Helsinki - Fingers Crossed

I honestly do not know how I got this album. One fine day, I notice this folder on my harddisk and enqueue the songs on Winamp, and wham! I am hooked. I asked my Finnish friend at the office about the band - obviously, any band with "Helsinki" in it has to be from Finland - and he said ( after a bit of googling) that it was an Australian band. Weird. But yeah, he was hooked too. Fingers Crossed is one album that defies description of any sort; other than the word "joyous", I can't think of anything at all to say what the music makes me feel. Maybe the last album that gave me this euphoric feeling was Cake's Motorcade of Generosity, with its catchy guitars and brass sections. Yes, brass section - AiH is one of the bands that uses woodwinds to superb effect, along with the oddest instrumental accompaniments. I think I need to share one of the songs with you guys, because I am running out of words here. So here you go - you know what to do, right?

Rage Against The Machine - Renegades

I have been a fan of Rage Against The Machine ever since Neo put the phone down and flew out of the phonebooth, to the mind-smashing intro riffs of 'Wake Up'. I bought the cassette of Renegades the day I saw it at the music store, though I was a penniless student then. It was their last studio album, because they broke up right after, with Zach de La Rocha going solo and the rest of the band teaming up with Chris Cornell to form Audioslave. What I didn't know then was that the album featured covers of punk, hip-hop and rock songs. Four years later, I put on the album again, and discovered that I now knew the originals too, and the contrast is stunning. Songs by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, the MC5, Afrika Bambaata, The Rolling Stones - some already angst-ridden in their original versions, others quiet and unassuming - they are all given a perspective that's uniquely Rage Against The Machine. But some things remain unchanged - four years ago, I loved the quiet menace of the drumless, bassless Beautiful World most of all, and today, it still makes me smile.

....what goes around comes around.

1. Total amount of music files on your computer:

35 GB. Because my hard drive crashed two days ago, and one partition had to be formatted. Bye-bye, my complete Aphex Twin/Sigur Ros collection. *sniff* Some of you will be back again soon enough, and some will have to be downloaded again. ( already have, in fact)

And oh, some of it is legal, ripped versions of CDs I have back at Hyderabad.

2. The last CD you bought was:

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero OST,
Humko Ishq Ne Maara OST
Hanging Around by Trickbaby.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero or Bose, for short, was a disaster. Humko Ishq Ne Maara was a pseudo-gift from moccacino - because I was the one that had to pay for it - but quite a worthwhile buy, containing a number of peppy feelgood songs from the nineties. Most likely the movie never got released, but the music has endured. The music is by Aadesh Srivastav and the singers are all winners of Meri Aawaz Suno, the TV show that ran on Doordarshan ( and then on other channels, as if I care which ones...)

3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message?

Juno Reactor - Pistolero
Varrtina - Itkin

Both these songs played as I was answering the questions above, and considering that I have only these two enqueued on Winamp, I mustmention both. The Juno Reactor song is mucho different from the Matrix work these guys have done, it's off their album Shango, a flurry of acoustic guitar riffs and Spanish vocal samples, with the occasional gunshot.

Varttina is every bit as good as I thought it would be - this is the three-girl band from Finland collaborating with AR Rahman on the Lord Of The Rings: The Musical. Itkin reminded me of the title song of Parthaley Paravasam.

Incidentally, I got both these songs from a Finnish friend in the office.

4. Write down 5 songs you often listen to or that mean a lot to you.
This is going to be tough, I can feel it.
For starters, I am going to exclude all AR Rahman and Björk songs. Among the ones that remain:

1) The 5-6-7-8's - I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The song that the house band of The House of Blue Leaves is playing in Kill Bill Vol 1, when the Bride is spying on O-Ren Ishii and the band. Possibly my first Japanese song. Life has never been the same since then.

2) Indian Ocean - Village Damsel - The first Indian Ocean song I heard, and possibly the one that cemented my love for the band forever. I will always associate this band with my Higher Secondary Board Examinations. And Goa. And sitting in my college room wondering if I will ever see this band live and kiss Susmit Sen's hands.

3) Vangelis - Chariots of Fire - I was 10 when I heard the Hindi version of this song, and then a couple of years later, someone played this in a quiz. Floored. One of the songs I used to play before exams to pep myself up bigtime, along with Koncham Nilavu ( That's a Rahman song, hence not in the list) Also the first song I taught myself to play on the keyboard.

4) Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Musst Musst - I love all the versions of this song available, the sparse, voice-dominated Qawwali, or the Infinite Guitar-backed fusion piece, even the trip-hoppy Massive Attack version. Not to mention the innumerable other versions mixed by the holy mixmeisters from T-Series. Of course, I first heard of this through Viju Sha's adaptation in Mohra.

5) Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit - If there is a song that reminds me of my College years, it has to be this (or maybe RATM's Killing in the Name)


5. Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why?
moccacino, because I think I know what she'll put in, and just want to double-check.
psasidhar, though he is out of town at the moment. He doesn't do memes, but I have a feeling he'll like this.
vrikodhara, because I want to find out what the boy's been downloading. Humph!

Happiness Quotient : High
New Music Quotient: Extremely High.
Anime Quotient: Low
Graphic Novel Quotient: Extremely High
Ebay Spend Rate: Red Alert.
Work Rate: High.

There you have it.

I have come to the conclusion that there's absolutely nothing personal/thought-provoking/interesting I can write in my Livejournal, so I shall skip the Happiness part, and the reasons behind it, and go directly to the New Music section.

Secondspin.com rocks. The US-based site sells second-hand CDs, with very low shipping costs. They send CDs sans jewel cases, and the postage comes to a flat 5$ plus 35 cents per CD. But that's not why I say it rocks. I had ordered a small shipment of anime DVDs once, and a Danny Elfman TV/Movie theme collection called Music For a Darkened Theatre Volume One a couple of months ago, which were delivered pretty early. Two months later, I get an email, which said - We have not received any orders from you in quite sometime, and so here's this coupon that gives you free International Shipping on your next order.

And who could resist this offer? I went berserk ( what's new, pussycat?), and ended up ordering thirteen CDs off them, a lot of Original Soundtracks I had been lusting after, some assorted artistes I wanted, and two Sonny Chiba DVDs that I included because they were two dollars each. The prices of the CDs ranged between 7.99 for some ( which, let me add, sell for 525 rupees here, if you manage to find them), and 99 cents for others ( doobie-doobie-do! ), so the average price came to about 175 rupees per cd, which is about 3.5 dollars per CD. And of course, free shipping, so no additional charges.

Two weeks passed. And then two days. After which the package glided its way into my office cubicle. A little more money went into buying jewel cases - brand new ones, that is - and a lot of evenings after that were spent in taking in the new music.

This followed a particular sale I stumbled upon, in dear li'l Hyderabad a week ago, where a shop was getting rid of its unsold CDs, and were selling them off for 150 rupees . Picked up ten, and for a change, paid cash.

( The loot, with commentary.... )