Got this from the PB forum written by one of the few intelligent people on that forum.
"Rahman's Mangal Pandey - This is another fine album by Rahman which covers the gamut from the Mangala chant to the mujra to the holi song to the qawwali. More often that not Rahman's singers fail him in Hindi and here also it happens at times, most notably with Kavita Krishnamurthy who sounds shrill at times on the wari wari song. But this album offers another index of the Rahman magic. He covers familiar terrain on many of the songs and he manages to incorporate the history at each point and yet give the song in each case a certain degree of freshness and innovation. The Holi song particularly exemplifies this. Rahman has now with this one three major North Indian albums if you include Taal and Lagaan as the other major efforts (of course there are a few others minor ones as well) and each one sounds very different from the other. A... ... comparison with Lagaan is particularly instructive since that film was also a period piece. The reason I bring this up is to drive home the idea that Rahman does not repeat himself on significant albums. In a sense therefore trying to gauge Rahman with his past achievements or bringing a sense of comparative expectations becomes a bit futile because (and using the current example) he will not give you a Taal-like or a Lagaan-like album. There have recently been some doubts about Rahman among Hindi speaking audiences precisely because of the above reasons (a sense of expectations not being met) but also because good albums in some cases belong to obscure films that are not hyped in any sense and the music fades from public consciousness, sometimes does not register in the first place. But just over the last eighteen months or so, and in Hindi, Rahman has given us Meenaxi, Yuva, Swades, Bose, and now Mangal Pandey. This is by even by his standards a rather rich sequence. For example three different modes of the qawwali can be heard on Meenaxi, Bose, Mangal Pandey. >From the mellow and introspective Swades (which incidentally sounds much better in Tamil because of superior playback singing beginning with the awesome Yesudas) to the ecstatic jungle beats of Yuva (again a bit better in the Tamil version because of some minor tweaking and vastly better lyrics) and to the rousing Bose a phenomenal range is in evidence and Meenaxi and Bose feature some major instrumental work by him as well. If one is looking for the 'new' as opposed to repetition one will find it in Rahman today in Mangal Pandey (and not only here); at the same time one will find once again the same virtuoso on this album whose dazzling talent has been a 'gift' to us for many years." This August, Discover the Birth of Your Independence and The Magic of A.R.Rahman's Music in Mangal Pandey - The Rising http://www.risingthefilm.com http://www.mangalpandeythefilm.com Music released: Jul 14, 2005 Movie releases: Aug 12, 2005 Explore, Experience, Enjoy A.R.Rahman - The Man, The Music, The Magic. Only at arrahmanfans - The definitive A.R.Rahman e-community. Homepage: http://www.arrahmanfans.com Admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arrahmanfans/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
