Well, for want of a better title I chose this !
Gajabhuja in Sanskrit means the trunk of an elephant !
So, in short, the title means big/huge fundas !! :-)
28 July 2005
Anbe Aaruyire - A Musical Review
Ok before i start off let me give out the standard stuff.Im not conoisseur of music.If your taste's dont match mine, well i care two hoots :-) , and if it matches mine well i can say that you are in august company :-) Without much ado here we go. 1. Anbe Aaruyire : This is the title song.It beats me as to how and on whom this song would be picturized.This sounds more like rahman announcing to the world, and to tamilian fans in particular, that he is alive and kicking and most importantly, the music in this songs speaks for itself ! a brilliantly rendered layering here.He starts off in his trademark high pitch vocal and then meanders into a not so high pitch.The background beat sounds slightly familiar though. Must be from Uriah Heap or one of those bands.Listen carefully for a bubble like sound towards the end of the first stanza that is not repeated again anywhere in the song ! Rahman again proves his mastery over mixing sounds ! Oh well it would be wrong to say that he is just a sound engineer ! 2. Mayilirage sung by Madhusree, Naresh Iyer.One wonders why rahman chose madhushree for this song.She kills the pronunciation for the word "Tamizha".It sounds more like grating sandpaper over steel and i instantly feel like running over and throttling her ! But credit goes to rahman for a brilliant mix of thavil, that quintessential tamilian instrument with tabla.If you remember right he gave a brilliant song with thavil in the movie Gentleman for the song ottakatha kattiko.He again starts off with the nadhaswaram, thavil and tabla.Overall a nice melodious song.Naresh iyer is a new find but his voice breaks up in the high pitch vocals. 3.Varugiraai sung by hariharan and chitra.This is a standard rahman song in a sense that it has all the "God" hariharan's vocal twists and turns.Sounds real pleasing to the ear except that rahman could have toned down the instrument part in the background. 4.Thigu… Thigu… This songs starts off pretty cool in a sufi(?) like opening and graduates into trademark rahmania type song.Decent listening.sadhana sargam seems to have done a pretty neat job though 5. Thazhuviudu sung by SPB and sadhana sargam. What can one say about SPB anymore ? At 60 years of age and after 32,000 songs one can just listen spell bound at the way he squeezes more and more out of his vocal chords ! Man this guy *is* something.And he just adds sheen to rahman's music.Listen to his high pitch shouts, though i do have my doubts as to whether it was indeed SPB himself.Knowing rahman and the capabilities of his studio, anything is possible ;-) 6. Maramkothiye sung by shankar mahadevan, blazee, shalini and vasundhara das.Blazee these days seems to be a permanent rahman fixture.Oh well this is IMHO the surprise packet of the whole album.It is a remix of a song in this same album, a remix of the Mayilirage song.Rahman for S.J.Surya's earlier movie "New" pulled out a remix of the MGR classic "Thottal Poo malarum".In fact if you listen to this song carefully he easily defines a new way of remixing songs ! Some stunning techno music.And without doubt foot tapping ! Blazee does a neat job of the rapping part.But it is Shankar mahadevan and vasundhara das who effortlessly waft through the song.And blazee starts off with the words "Woodpecker" In case you are left wondering why he does that, well the title of the song "maramkothiye" means woodpecker in tamil ;-).Watch out the for the neatly done guitar and drums combo.If Illayaraja redefined the disco song scene in film music way back as early 1980 even before the hindi fellows came up with disco, rahman has simply destroyed the way remixes are being done and in the process redefined it ! Also watch out for the fading effect on the Shakar Mahadevan's voice.To many this would seem that this is close to the "Yakkai Thiri" song from the movie "Ayudha Ezhuthu" but fret not, it is nowhere close !
Throughout the whole album one gets a feel that all the songs have a strong classical base, either carnatic or hindustani.If you wonder as to how someone can put carnatic in a rap like song, well check out the song "Dating" from the movie "Boys". Rahman unleashes Hamsadhwani on blazee's rap to give a superb combo ! And most of the songs showcase his primary strength, in that of fusing various instruments to give a new sound !
At the end of the album one thing is for sure.He is back and is back in no mean terms.But back with a bang.For all those doubting thomases and wannabe contenders, he does serve you a reminder with the title song itself. You may want to be a contender for the top musician of the tamil music industry, but you better contend with rahman first and they try to scale up to the raja Illayaraja himself ! K.Shyam
Listening to Rahman's latest offering Anbe Aaruyire off hand i can say this for sure.The rest of the so called musicians vidyasagar {a notable exception}, yuvan shankar raja etc etc are just worthless pedestrians.The orchestration range and the mixing combined with some stunning rythms is sure to blow the listener away ! Listen closely to feel the underlying melody folks.This is not an album that will catch on to you at the first listening, nor is this an album which you will discard after a few days ! Listen to the title song sung by Rahman himself and SPB's voice in that thavudhu song ! Does anyone need to say anything about SPB anymore ? Watch this space for a detailed review of the songs sometime around K.Shyam
Folks; Forgive me for the title rip-off from supposedly surya's movie.Ah but then movie might not see the light of the day so i guess it's ok ;-) Anyway this weekend was @ yengal tamizhagam ! It rained. Correction. It poured like it wont pour ever again ! Cats and dogs is passe.It rained Bits & Bytes.Yes folks yours truly was at the chennai blogger's meet ! Since so many have blogged about it im not going to do so ! But met up with quite a lot of intresting folks. Best part of the meet : A lady from Indian Express asking me as to which year of engineering i was in ! Thank you madame.You made my day :-) Kribs could not believe it ! It's ok kribs. Sometimes these things do happen. Oh well on another note im indeed in college but as a graduate student! And that too after sufficient time spent fooling around in my job. And how did guys find me out on Orkut ? .Surprising. And looking at the friend's list reminds me of that famous adage.There are just six degrees of seperation between any two human beings on this planet.Meaning between two seemingly unrelated and unknown individuals, search hard and you can establish a contact between them using just six people.Now isn't it a good liner to get started talking with your office HR bombshell ? Or that hunk you meet at the party ? Don't blame me if you get the birckbat ;-).I mean i meet someone i dont even know at the blogger's meet and his chain is just 3 people long ! It is indeed a small world after all. K.Shyam
How many movies have i seen of yours, where i always used to feel it is not the actor, but the character talking, singing, dancing ? You will always be missed Chevalier Shivaji Ganesan.
True there are instances where you have been criticised for overacting, but look at your retort: "What is acting? It means doing something that is not natural. So then where is the question of overacting? When your mother dies, what do you do? You shout Amma (mother) and cry, don't you? Your instant reaction is to cry out loud. Not sit quietly covering your eyes with your hands. That's exactly what I do in my films."
Who can forget your roles in Andha naal, Devar magan, thillana mohanambal to name a few ? This is a well written piece ! K.Shyam
Rediff along with Slime(s) Of India have been real past masters in publishing that is outright crap and total worthless piece of items, which they call news ! This is another example of that ! Asking for views from some unknown two bit blogger ? And they have their own system of ranking where "Only the best blogs will be featured" ! Hah dumb asses ! What was that article supposed to be anyway ? Crap absolute crap and fie on those guys who forwarded me that article :-( K.Shyam
Rarely do i do anything without plunging into it in full.On a more random thought, cribbing about me to someone else or trying to kozhi mootify { meaning trying to say he is that, he is this } rarely works, the reason being that, when i decide { and that decision is a real looong process to be honest! }, i make sure that i always clear the air around, and be honest about my white and black side ! Oh if you are preplexed as to why this kind of a post, well i know for sure that there is someone out there who would be really intrested in me saying this :-) K.Shyam
Folks; After a long time i'm back with another of my { sic ? } fundas !
Here we go :
The above is in Tamil { needless to say its a pity if you dont know that language! }. It means this : Gold, Women, Property are those things behind which you must not go.They must come to you ! And these lines have been immortalized by rajinikanth in many of his movies too.As "Thalai" says there is no point in loosing sleep and running behind it ! This was used to create the above tamil text, and it indeed is a great piece of software !
This is an article by Author Sujatha in Indian Express.Definitely worth a read !
The net and I- Sujatha
The Internet is described as an ‘accidental superhighway’. It started as an American Defense Department project as an academic exercise to protect sensitive data from the Russians during the Cold War. Look what it has eventually turned out to be? Every day I get junk mail promising minimum six inches of penile enlargement!
The internet is a perfect example of chaos theory in action. Patterned disorder, a shape underlying apparent randomness. Three major innovations have contributed to this orderly disorder. Increased bandwidth, the world wide web (sometimes called world wide wait) and hypertext mark up languages.
Today it is possible to search the web and get useless information from across the globe transcending language, culture, geography and centuries in five seconds.
Like many others, I had my first acquaintance with the net through email. Friends started contacting me in bizarre abbreviations like asap, btw, tcalss (I never got to unravel this) Then came mail from strangers inviting me to join various fraternities and kinky societies. Then came the Viagra sellers and finally hate mail.
I quickly changed my mail ID and password and I am lying low and open my mail with a very nervous finger with a prayer Lord give me this day my daily anti-virus.
The net is a great source of information, a veritable boon to writers like me. But there is a catch. When writing Maniratnam’s movie Uyire (Dil Se in Hindi) the director wanted to know the expansion of RDX. I sent a query in Yahoo! and got the first ten of about 10000 entries. I got the answer yes. Research Department Explosive. But I also got to know how to prepare RDX at home. The website talked about gelatinous sticks, nitric acid, glass stirrers and thermometers (‘It may explode keep off’). And to top it all, a question. Do you want to order some? Click here and give your credit card number. I quickly switched off and waited for the RAW men to get me. You get the point? The internet is like the river Ganges, beautiful marigold flowers float along with dead bodies.
Soon, I learned how to use it effectively using combinatorial search except occasional lapses like once when I wanted to know about the little bird ‘tit’. I was flooded with photographs of mammaries. The little bird tucked perilously in between them. Try it!
Here are my tips.
Abandon the search precisely after two hyperlinks. If you are not careful you will start with Ramanuja and end up in the rain forests of Amazon.
Consider the net as a huge resource. A virtual worldwide library. To make effective use, you should know the shelves and the cataloguing methods.
Avoid blogs, they are endless ego trips. Be very choosy in adding to your favourites list. It becomes too big.
McLuhan said, “Each new technology obsoletes an earlier technology and brings back a much earlier technology.” The internet has obsoleted letter writing, but with so much of bandwidth available and computing power, it is bringing back our ancient matrimonial practices like, the prospectives, meeting and talking to each other virtually and perhaps even marrying in cyberspace.
Why is it that humans tend to think always within the circle of "society" ? Strange. And definitely disturbing.Why can't we live for ourselves ? Why should we be bothered about what "others" say ? Ah it is true that when we need something we have to ask the "others". But then again just for that is it right to constrain ourselves into that small and un-necessary circle ? Progression of humanity is made not by sticking to the rules but by breaking free out of them ! K.Shyam
Folks; Have u spent your precious time cleaning up your vehicle only to have it mud splattered in the rain, to leave you fuming ? Or does it happen only to me ? :-( On a more tangential note this is what they dont teach you in driving school : for every 10kmph remember to use 1 gear.so it goes like this: 0-10 - 1st gear, 10-20 - 2nd gear and so on and so forth. This is a very useful piece of info which i gathered.Of course this might not be true in all cases but in most cases it works out pretty well ! Happy and safe driving folks K.Shyam
Ladies, Gentlemen & Others; Please accord a warm welcome to the new template ! Oh ok it is not that im changing templates as frequently as i change my { u know what you pervert ;-) } Q : Who is the inspiration behind this template change ? A : For the regulars to my blog it must be quite evident but anyway it is from here of course !. Q : Who gave u that cute looking elephant trunk picture ? A : Refer to answer of question 1 ;-) I somehow think this template is a kick-ass one and looks real good that all my previous templates.Especially the font and the color ! K.Shyam
In a landmark move that is bound to enthuse open source developers like me, the European union threw out { in every sense of it } a controversial bill to patent software products ! Oh well it is not that the software we wrote is going to be affected but then again if this bill had been passed, he and yours truly might have been in some serious trouble. On a more comforting note the attempt by the indian government to pass this bill had been crushed quite some ago, thanks to the commies. Now the commies with their "we dont want anything from the ruling government" policy might have opposed this bill, but who cares ? That bill is not going to come into my country atleast ! Read the full text of the European Union drama here. K.Shyam
Those were the days when maestro raja came up with some stunning songs for worhtless people ! example is that useless rascal ramarajan also called pasu-nesan { lover of cow :-) } he invariably had a cow for company in all his movies ! some of the stunners that maestro pulled of were 1. madura marikozhundu vaasam - enga ooru paatukaran 2. shenbagame shenbagame - from enga oorupaatukaran again 3. almost all songs from the movie karakattakaran !
Oh well im not going to talk about those songs. I did hear this song called sorgamae endralum from the movie oora vittu oora vandhu. I said Raja had this habit of stunners for worthless people right ? This song is probably one of those examples.This stunning song is set in pure hamsanadham and yet sounds so very folkish!, has some brilliant orchestration and probably one of those rare songs for which raja's voice blends well {oh discount the high pitch will u?}. There are so many songs which he lends his voice to and ultimately mauls it ;-). example : the song "valli valli ena vandhan" from the movie deivavakku.coming back to this song check out the way it opens and the way it gradually moves into high pitch. stunning and simply mind blowing ! Oh well the beauty of raja's music is simply this : if you are a conoissuer of carnatic music you will find that he has stuck to the basics so well and if you are layman then it would simply be foot tapping.However if you are a half baked { neither here nor there } like yours truly, then what you would be is bewildered ! you would be left thinking how did this guy manage to pull this off !!
I Will digress a little bit here : It was around the middle of the year 2001.My roommate has just then got a guitar and i started fiddling around with it.I had seen him struggle with it while it came up quite effortlessly to me.In one of those saturday evening jaunts in my other friends house i started fiddling around with their guitars.Then my friend told me this : why dont u try carnatic on guitar ? carnatic and that too on guitar ? anyway after some prodding i did check up on "God" Prasanna and then fully inspired i started hunting for schools to teach me ! I was a complete novice in carnatic music, at best i was confined to film music.That too rahman-mania was at its peak time too.After hunting all around banaglore i finally got someone to teach me. Imagine to my amazement when he said me this: To get a feel of pure carnatic music and how it can be used listen to raja's early songs ! The teacher was a kannadiga, does not understand even a word of tamil, and he tells me the best way to analyze music after a point is to listen to raja's songs and try to dissect it ! such is the greatness of that maestro !
So why is this song running in my mind now ? well the lines are right there folks : the song says "even if it is heaven, can it equal my hometown ?" ;-) and the second line says "whatever be the nation can it be the same as my nation".ah but that is not the punch line.the third and the fourth lines are : "all the languages that are spoken around the world; can it equal the sweetness of tamil !!" Come back raja.Atleast give away your DNA for cloning ;-) Rahman is just a 50% of u ! The rest including your sons are just worthless pedestrains ! K.Shyam
After driving around the roads of banaglore on my honda unicorn for a month or so here are my observations: 1. The bike is pretty good.Neat balance and handling, sturdy too ! 2. The mileage is ok.For 100rs of petrol i get around 100kms.What more is needed from a 150cc kick ass bike ? 3. I was knocked down by a speeding ford ikon car once and my bike does have some bruises ;-) { its a different matter that the ikon car was trying to overtake another car from left and hit me when i was almost on the corner of the road.May he rot in hell! }
Anyway some general observations about the traffic : 1. I need not say anymore but bangalore traffic sucks bigtime 2. People are absolutely short of patience.Honking at you when the vehicle in front of you has not yet moved. 3. Road rage is at its peak here.Abusing, fighting !! 4. The main danger to you is the autos.They move slowly even on roads with heavy traffic and cut across from the middle of the road to a corner.I forgot the number of auto drivers who would have been at the receiving end of my rather foul mouth !! 5. Two wheeler drivers are a menace too.They cut across lanes, drive on footpaths and honk at you in a traffic signal when it is just orange light.Buggers when they are waiting at a signal they want to move when it becomes orange.However they also want to drive out when the signal just turns red ! So high probability of a traffic signal collision ! 6. It is totally unsafe to be driving anytime after 10.30pm. The call center carriers of death are looming large, driving in one ways, jumping signals !
Two wheeler driving is a major stress indeed in this hell hole ! K.Shyam
Nee vendum boomiyil paayum nadhiye neengamal tholgalil { with an accent on tholgalil } saayum rathiye wafts the melodious voice of SPB in the song "sandana katrae" from thanikattu raja.Listen to it here and get blown away by the orchestration, the flute and that thana thana nana nana accenuations of janaki and SPB. What a song to drive away the bugs from ur code ! This song came out when i was all of 5 years of old.My earliest memories of hearing this song dates back definitely to class 4 when i was all of 9 years old.More on associating memories with songs in a later post ! K.Shyam
After remaining incommunicado through this blog what would a reader think if he sees this kind of a post ? Well i can't say much except that it's 1.25 am right now on a friday night / saturday morning, which ideally, should have been spent snoring away or better still watching a movie, either batman begins or war of the worlds ! That is life @ IISc for u folks ;-) and oh boy this kicks some serious butt i must say ! Now to get back to those wretched little and never ending bugs that seem to be running all over the place! K.Shyam
