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Ilayaraja : Mumbai Express - Where Crime Meets Confusion

This isn't the kind of music the Sea Of Tranquility usually covers. But some time ago we reviewed a piece called Ilayaraja's Music Journey, which was being distributed by prog-meister label ReR Records. It was a pure Indian piece - complete with sitar and that distinctive melodic Indian singing style with its long warbled notes; and not being very familiar with that genre of music, reviewing it was a challenge. That review led to us receiving a review copy of another, very different Ilayaraja piece, Where Crime Meets Confusion, a far more approachable but nevertheless very Indian album. Very different from the previous record we reviewed - this one is the soundtrack to a Bollywood movie made by Kamal Hassan. (In case you aren't aware, Bollywood is the nickname given to the Hindi language Mumbai - aka Bombay - based film industry in India. It is the biggest film industry in the world with over 1,000 movies a year.) Click here to see a review of the movie - with its convoluted and lightly humorous plot.

Where Crime Meets Confusion contains a bit of everything. There's a very jazzy section in "Monkey Chatter" with a synth-pop rhythm and staccato piano style, that could have been at home on any continent. There are pure movie sound-track atmospheric sections, "Bander Ki Dug Dugi" is an interesting vocals-oriented piece with a lilting rhythm carried by upbeat singing in a not-quite-western style - that isn't quite Indian either. There are plenty of spoken-voice sections, but not knowing the language, and because the CD comes with the bare minimum of artwork, and no booklet, we don't have a clue about the storyline.

One of the highlights of the album are the very pretty female vocals in a soft, midrange soubrette-like style. Some of the female spoken-voice sections are quite attractive as well, with an accentuated and unusual (to Western ears) sing-song lilt often associated with the Gujarati languages.

The album ends with 9-minute piece with three minutes of what sounds like an unskilled child actor in dialog with older actors, and develops into a soft ballad with barely a hint of the Indian vocal style - a sort of 50/50 fusion of Indian and Western styles.

So we're very much out of our element with this one, and we probably won't delve into this territory again - preferring to stick with our more familiar progressive genres - but you just might get a kick out of it. Not progressive, and certainly not rock, but the compositions are solid, the performances are very professional, it's more Western-oriented than most Indian music, and you might find it enjoyable.

 

Track Listing:

  • Aila Re (Part 1)
  • Pyar Chahiye (Part 1)
  • Bandar Ki Du Dugi
  • Monkey Chatter
  • Aila Re (Part 2)
  • Pyar Chahiye (Part 2)

  • Added: March 1st 2007
    Reviewer: Duncan Glenday
    Score:
    Related Link: The Artist's Website
    Hits: 5923
    Language: english

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