Kadhal is an interesting album with five tracks by Music Director Paul J, who has collaborated with accomplished violin duo Ganesh Kumaresh for the instrumental, “The Search”
Phoonk Doonga,is an avoidable track with loud painful arrangements overpowering even shankar mahadevan’s vocals.Theeratha vilayaattu pillai, a medley, starts with Dr Balamurali Krishna rendering a few lines of the krithi preceded by an alaap and ends with an alaap. The rest of the medley doesn’t make much sense, at least on just listening to the track. The transition from the krithi in the beginning to nimbuda nimbuda is catchy. The rest of the song is a set of unrelated bits and pieces with nothing remarkable to offer.
The rest of the album is a treat.
In Idhu daan vaazhkaya, the music director sets a grave tone right at the beginning, with a classical violin solo seamlessly blended into a western symphonic strings base. The song is ideal for the powerful western style of singing, which Vasundara Das excels in. Classical violin pitches in from time to time beautifully. The powerful arrangement, primarily violin based (as can be expected) proves distortion guitar unnecessary. One could have hoped for more refinement in percussion, but that’s well compensated for in this powerful song, which creates good impact.
“The Search”, an instrumental composed in collaboration with Ganesh Kumaresh featuring violinist Padma Shankar, is an absolute delight. The violin pallavi which appears intermittently in this track right from the beginning is catchy and addictive. The other layers of violin beautifully converge into this base. The canvas is simple and captivating with apt usage of percussion (Mridangam and the drum kit, sparingly used). This one is timeless, rare to find in a movie soundtrack nowadays.
Neethaane Neethane is sheer bliss. What more can one ask than Shankat Mahadevan and Mahalaxmi Iyer singing their hearts out to a beautiful tune and delightful carnatic violin interludes. The song starts with a nadaswaram solo, “Asathoma Sathgamaya…” seeming out of place in the back ground. The track shifts and kicks off with a beautiful violin piece accompanied by a jathi announcing the treat which follows. The combination of jathis and violin is used throughout the song as interludws and the result is joyous. The arrangement for the song is perfect, using picking on strings throughout the song to great effect. The use of Thavil and mridangam is also apt. The song teasingly traverses off the beat and back, which is amazing. Also, the rhythm beautifully shifts into the 4/4 cycle towards the end of the anupallavi and goes back into the 7 beat cycle (misra chapu) used in the song.To top it all off, the singers have clearly been given creative freedom to stunning effect in the rendering, resulting in a winning track easily one of the best yet, this year.
Idhu dan vaazhkaya, the search and neethane make this album worth buying.
We thank Music Director Paul J and Mr. K Mahadev for corrections in the initial review and apologise for the error in credits.
Hi,
thanks for the review, but there are some obvious mistakes that need to be corrected. Ganesh – Kumaresh are not the music directors of the film, I have collaborated with them only on one song which is “the search”. All the other songs happen to be my original compositions except for “Theeratha Villayattu” which is a play between traditions arranged by me. I would be much obliged if you would make the necessary correction.
regards
Paul J
Music Director
Hi,
there are some mistakes in your review, I have collaborated with Ganesh-Kumaresh on just one song which is “the search”, the rest happen to be my original compositions except for Theeratha Villayaattu which is a play between traditions. I would be much obliged if you would make the correction.
regards
Paul J
Music Director
Dear Mr. Naveen,
I beg to differ about your review regarding three songs composed by Mr. Ganesh and Mr.Kumaresh in the movie Kadhai. We have very high regard for their music and contributions to music. Their role in the movie as far as we know is to have rendered some of the outstanding violin pieces along with Mrs. Padma Shankar. Outside of this, all the music had been composed by Mr. Paul J.
This we know because we are very close family friends of the Producer Mr. Rajan Radhakrishnan, Director Abishek and Music Director Paul J and, we are part of the movie too. I was present in Budapest, Hungary where the background score for the movie was recorded with the Budapest Orchestra and had sung a few snippets as part of the re-recording .
We know for a fact that all the music was composed by Mr. Paul Jacob. If you have any reason to believe those three songs were composed by Ganesh and Kumaresh please do provide factual information.
Thank you,
K Mahadev