Chittagong – Music Review (Bollywood Soundtrack)

You can buy the soundtrack here. It costs just 38 rupees.

Of the four elaborately orchestrated instrumental pieces, title song is a potpourri of sounds (one of which is a very familiar patriotic song which I can’t place) and Inspiration has some beautiful instrumentation, the sitar in particular, but doesn’t really impress as a song. The Battle is the only one that has the relative coherence and length to be enjoyed as a song, as it sticks to the hindolam/malkauns raga base even as it shifts from brass to sarod. Masterda bears the promise of being the best of the lot, with its fab use of strings (hamsanaadam is the raga, I think), but just as you start enjoying yourself it is done, in less than a minute.

The anthemic sound and patriotic fervor of Jeeney Ki Wajah goes slightly along the lines of Shankar Ehsaan Loy’s score for Lakshya, but not so much as to induce ennui. And that is also thanks to a tidy job by the chorus (featuring a lot of new names – Aarti Sinha, Mani Mahadevan, Kshitij Wagh, Pooja Gopalan, Raman Mahadevan , Shreekumar Vakkiyil) in delivering the classical-oriented tune (I thought I sensed kedar/hamir kalyani somewhere). The choral work is what stands out in Ishan as well, while the director Bedabrata Pain does a flawed cameo as singer. There are some lovely moments in the arrangement too, like the use of sitar. The soundtrack however belongs to the remaining two songs. Bechayan Sapne, apart from acting as a reminder about the existence of Abhijeet Sawant, charms with its simple Bengali folk-based arrangement that surprisingly features a sax in between. And with Mahalaxmi Iyer joining Abhijeet on the vocals, it is job well done on that front too. Then there is Bolo Na. While the opening line seems much like the opening of Broken Promises from EDT (primarily due the dominant raga bageshri), the song takes off on its own route after that point, and how! Shankar Mahadevan has seldom failed when it comes to classical-based songs, and nails it here too. The highlight of the sublime arrangement is the sarod, which beautifully complements the singing all through, and owns that solo towards the end.

It was only a couple of days back was I tweeting that SEL have been the only ones MIA in a year that has seen pretty much every leading composer in top form, and they join the party in style, albeit slightly late. Chittagong is the best SEL have sounded in a long time, hope the soundtrack gets the exposure it deserves.

Music Aloud Rating – 8/10

Top Recos – Bolo Na, Bechayan Sapne, Jeeney Ki Wajah, The Battle