ram-krishna-hari
Kumar Mahendra
SaReGa Digital; Rs 65

By the time one is on the rewind of this bhajan collection by Kumar Mahendra, set to music by him as well, one is humming along with some of them, especially Raasta kar raha, Mohan Mathura mein ja kar ke phir lot ke aana bhool gaye and Bheer pari jabbhakt pukare. Not all the numbers are equally rhythmical as the ones mentioned, but they do grow on one after a couple of listens and create just the right mood for some quiet moments of serene thoughts.

Deepali Singh

kon surey aaj
Various
FF; CD Rs 49

This album of eight Bangla Adhunik numbers is to showcase music director Milton Kuiya’s compositions. Suman Banik gives voice to three of his compositions while Rakhi, Barnali and Geetanjali sing one each. Here Milton presents himself as a composer, lyricist (he’s written two songs) and also as singer. Five of the songs are however written by Debu Chakraborty and one by Satyagopal Acharya. Milton sings a solo, Kano je ashaye, and one duet with Antara, Kano bhoy jage. The compositions are good, the songs written by him are average and he could safely give singing a miss.

Madhuparna Das

TAXI NO. 9211
Music: Vishal & Shekhar
Lyrics: Dev Kohli, Vishal Dadlani
Sa Re Ga Ma; CD, Rs 145

In keeping with the trend of ‘unusual’ voices today (Rahman professed long back that he likes using only ‘unusual’ voices), Taxi No. 9211 has two rocking songs, sung by Bappi Lahiri and Adnan Sami, both music directors in their own right. Can’t remember if Bappi has sung for an outside music director before. The Mumbai se aaya mera dost guy is roped in perfectly to belt out Boombai nagariya with Nana Patekar and John Abraham lending vocals like rap stars. The other, Meter down, is not just rocking, it’s rollicking: the singing, the lyric, the music, even the backing vocals by Merriene and Nimosa (all other songs have Nisha accompanying Merriene). In addition, it has softer, romantic numbers, Aazmaale (Shekhar Ravjiani), Bekhudi (Shaan), Udne do (Kunal Ganjawala, Harshdeep) and the simplest of the lot, Ek nazar mein bhi (KK, Sunidhi Chauhan). With all the males with interchangeable names, really.

Anil Grover