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Tashan

YRF Music, CD, Rs. 160

Somehow this album is thankfully not what I expected, considering the visuals I’d been seeing on the CD cover. This one’s more in the league of Vishal-Shekhar’s “Bluffmaster”, “Dus” and “Om Shanti Om”.

This is one album you will enjoy if you don’t take it seriously. When the tagline for the movie says: “The ishtyle, the goodluck, the pharmoola” you kind of get a hint about what you are in for.

One must hand it to Vishal-Shekhar. The real gem of the album is ‘Dil dance maare’. They’ve got it all right. This is one number you can enjoy because it’s outright ridiculous, but has no pretensions of being otherwise. It’s priceless for its mix of Bhojpuri, English and Hindi. “White-white face dekhe dilwa beating fast sasura chance mare re, O very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re”. The use of English is straight out of the Hindi heartland, with the tremendous effort made to “show-off” knowledge of English, really showing. (Two of the film’s characters are called Bachchan Pande and Bhaiyyaji…) So the lyrics don’t sound pseudo. There’s a good goulash of the harmonium, beats. Don’t miss out the killer lyrics throughout: “Sky ke jaise blue-blue ye tohra nain sarabi” “ye dhadkan hogayi very loud”. Sukhwinder, Udit Narayan and Sunidhi Chauhan seem to have enjoyed themselves as much singing it. Vishal has penned the lyrics and has got its feel, spot on.

The songs are interspersed by each actor’s dialogue, where they present a declaration of what their “tashan” or style is. So it makes for only five crisp tracks, which is ideal.

The album actually opens with Sukhwinder, in his element, singing ‘Dil haara’. Though reminiscent of the title track of “Omkara”, the song really has you latched on with unusual use of phrases like “Taabad tod naachloo” and a sudden refrain of “O-Ho” thrown at you, and of course the strain of the accordion and guitars. Lyrics for this song and the energetic ‘Tashan mein’ have been penned by Piyush Mishra, who’s gone on an imaginative flight with his words.

‘Chhalia’ is your average gyrating number perhaps designed for Miss Pooh and her size zero figure; and the song, like the size, has nothing in it.

‘Falak tak’ sounds fresh and is completely different from the rest of the album in its tone, language and nicely buffed, no rough-edges music. Yet it has all the trappings of the pastel-sari-dance-in-Switzerland fluff and candyfloss of the Yash Raj of yore.

The signing off track ‘Tashan Mein’ rocks. An interesting juxtaposition of ideas, lyrics and music and Saleem’s voice (supported by Vishal’s) give it a rock band meets qawwali feel. Sample the lines: “Thode sharam pe sharam hue he, thode nadaan hai…” “Hum pe kurbaan hain neel samandar ka”. The song suddenly breaks into rock-band fashion hi-energy chorus with guitars, lapses again into harmonium-attendant music and alaap, slipping back into slide guitars with ease, accompanied with bouncy drumming.

The album’s quite a crispy crunchy mouthful.

BHUMIKA K.

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