AR Rahman
has announced the release of his first Hollywood original motion picture
soundtrack,
post Slumdog Millionaire on his Facebook page. The Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman,
Malin Akerman starrer, Couples Retreat, centered around four couples who go to
a island resort to work on their marriage, has 15 tracks by A R Rahman, most of
which are instrumental.
Cashing in
on the Rahman buzz, producer Vince Vaughn has put up the entire soundtrack of
the movie on a website created especially for live streaming of the
tracks, www.couplesretreatsoundtrack.com
though the
movie has an official website of its own. The album hasn't been released on a
physical medium yet, and is only available online.
The album is
largely instrumental in nature, as the songs are likely to be used in the
background of the movie, as opposed to in song-and-dance routines that Rahman's
music has mostly been used for in India. And clearly, the maestro has showcased
his prowess over different genres of music, as the album would have a bearing
of his Hollywood career.
So you get
to hear plenty of Western classical and a few Indian classical sounds, that are
poles apart from the music of Slumdog Millionaire, which had a more pacy,
modern, up tempo feel to it. Most of the instrumentals in the album have an
operatic orchestration, ranging
from dark, frenetic violin-piano based themes that give it sense of an impending
twist-in-the- tale (Meeting Marcel, Shark, Itinery) to fresh-as-morning, soft
and lighter operas (Jason and Cynthia
piano suite, Waterfall, Animal Spirits)..
'Though none
of the tracks are overtly Indian in nature, Rahman does leave a stamp of his
roots fusing classical Indian instruments with western sounds. Check out
'Undress which is a stunning miridangam-veena-bass guitar fusion. In fact, the
best tracks of the albums, including 'Undress', are ones that have the Indians
touch to them).
'Salvadore,
that fuses Kailash Kher's gorgeous alaaps with a part-Spanish, part-Arabic
tune, is a treat to the ears, as is ‘Sajna’
one of only three songs with words, that has Rahman's soulful interlude of
'Sajna', with romantics English lyrics apparently sung by Vaughn himself (as
Google
would have us believe). Also check out the superior 'Tour of the villa'
instrumental version of the same too.
More glory to Rahman
The
best track on the album is undoubtedly 'Kurukuru
kan', a soft, part-classical, fully-awesome
Tamil track, again sung by Rahman, that's as bright
and sunny as sunshine, and even
has the sounds of birds chirping in its background. The other tracks on the
album have the Hawaiin/Carribean flavour to them, since the movie is set on
one such island. 'Nana' is a fun, groovy number with a caribean-style rap, and
so is 'Lau',
with its Congo drums and
country music.
With its vast soundscape and shades of Indian-Western fusion Couples Retreat
can only result in extended Hollywood glory for the 'Mozart of Madras', who has
taken the word
by storm.
http://indian-music-bgm.blogspot.com/ http://www.facebook.com/elensar5233
--- On Sat, 9/26/09, Abdul Manaf <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Abdul Manaf <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [arr] HT on Couples Retreat
To: [email protected]
Date: Saturday, September 26, 2009, 9:33 PM
Can any one type what HT's opinion about CR? Becoz in uae we can't access
Flickr..com
On 9/27/09, Gopal Srinivasan <catchg...@gmail. com> wrote:
http://www.flickr. com/photos/ arrahmanfans/ 3957916914/
--
Regards
W/P SHJ
