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MY FIVE -- AKSHAY RAJMOHAN

A mellower track from the alternative rock stable of the Foo Fighters, “Still” is a nostalgic song reminiscing about the days when you felt absolutely nothing could go wrong: your teens. Frontman Dave Grohl has matured a lot from his Nirvana days, both as a musician and as a writer and this is evident in this track from “In Your Honour”. A mostly acoustic, “Still”, is an atmospheric track that wraps around you like a blanket. Lyrically, the song gets you thinking of old times, with friends, intimate secrets, and things you grew up with. It creates a sense of nostalgia.

I first heard this song on the soundtrack of a videogame and was absolutely blown away. Electronic music is generally frowned upon for its mechanical beats, unimaginative and disjointed riffs and obscure, meaningless wordplay. Destiny is the absolute anti-thesis of all that, restoring my faith in the eclectic genre. From a now defunct, very unknown band comes this brilliantly uplifting track. The track almost always hits a nerve. Sending goose-bumps all through your body and that tingle in your spine like every time you hear Denzel Washington make his speech from Remember the Titans. It is one of those tracks that make you want to get up right now and chase those dreams.

Another track I heard during my videogame adventures, the Deftone’s classic anthem “Be Quiet” and “Drive Far Away” is the perfect song to play when you just want to get away from it all. A song you would want to play aloud on the car’s stereo system as you hurtle down the road. With powerhouse guitar riffs, a smooth, jazz like bass line and Chino Moreno’s sublime voice crooning, “Drive me far away.” It’s the perfect get away song: from traffic, a bad day. Turn up the volume on this one.

The perfect tribute to a loved one. Despite being based on one man’s descent into LSD induced dementia, Shine On is an absolute masterpiece. Every time Rick Wright’s opening chords resonate through your speakers, you are just taken away into another place, where both time and space are absolutely still yet bound together with beautiful, yet absurdly poetic lyrics, and amazingly deep layers of sound, the song weaves a multitude of fantastic dimensions in all senses. And when those three haunting notes begin to strike repeatedly, you know the music has you transfixed and you know you’re not going anywhere. It’s time to sit back and Shine On.

This is one of those tracks that says everything you’ve ever wanted to say about the world around you. Tool’s Right in Two blends some mind blowing guitar riffs with tablaesque beats. Lyrically, Maynard James Kennan paints a vivid picture of man and his inherent inclination to be destructive. A modern rock classic, this song makes you sit back and actually reflect on things around you, in a much more global perspective, much like The Inconvenient Truth Ironically this song is very melodic and one can adapt an interpretive dance performance to the “Thandava – Samahara” with this song. It’s apt in the portrayal of the destruction the dance symbolizes.

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