Several members had appreciated Blue music. And now, the same members are immersed in Raavan and praising it.
I wonder what exactly one sees/ listens in an album to appreciate it? Blue and Raavan are quite different. And the difference in them is not just technical difference like a difference in classical or bolly songs that one can like some of both categories. There are deeper differences. I think the difference in blue and RAavan is that Blue was technically great without a soul, there was no inherent unity in those songs to weave the songs as a single fabric On the opposite extreme, Raavan is a unified album. There is a underlying common theme in all songs that suggests it could be a single song running for 30 minutes in raavan. Raavan is earthly. Raavan has given us our ARR of 10-15 years ago back to us. Raavan has generated a long thread on thiruda thiruda and all movies of ARR-Mani got discussed. Raavan is launching people on a rendezvous, down memory lane, old is gold, back to the basics. Raavan is making people rediscover and re-explore ARR. What else was discussed with blue? Nothing at all, except that it was a technically great album having new types of sounds. I think all those great and novel sounds are still there in raavan, but hardly anybody is talking about greatness and novelty of sounds in raavan - because there are so many things in raavan to be talked about that its technical supremacy seems to have taken a back seat low down in the list of priorities of things that we love to discuss about music, about ARR's music. Nobody has so far asked "where is ARR's signature in Raavan", the way we had asked where ARR's signatures were in Pappu. Why so? Because we all see ARR's signatures in each and every millisecond of Raavan. At the time of release of Blue, ARR had given a message about people's high expectations after his oscars. I had written then here that if ARR is thinking of people expectations and about oscar, it is a wrong step. I had said that ARR should forget people and forget oscars when he enters his studio and he should create what his heart says. Oscars didn't make ARR creative, ARR's creativity brought Oscars to him. Compare that to Raavan release. No statement by ARR, no mention of people's expectations, no mention of oscar (and even grammy) now. Raavan got released without a word from ARR. And Raavan has stirred the ARR-fandom like none of his albums had stirred in last 10 years, may be after Dil Se. I think, with Raavan, ARR has forgotten about people's expectations and he has put his awardee status in a corner. He is back to become pre-oscar ARR. And his creativity is evident in every beat of Raavan. A creativity that has a soul, unlike the sheer technical creativity of blue. Why should ARR explain his music the way he did in Blue? His music explains itself to us fans and we understand by listening his music when our souls are in touch with ARR's souls and when we are not in touch. Blue was a album composed by an Oscar winner whereas Raavan is an album composed by a humble human being who is a music lover. It can be said that ARR experimented a lot with Blue. And, an experiment never fails. It just gives feedback about our theories, confirming some, disproving some other. Seems ARR has taken that feedback of blue and has incorporated it in his style of composition (not the blue style, but the feedback on blue style) to come up with Raavan that has turned out to be abashed heart-stealer. With so many conceptual differences in Blue and Raavan that make both the ablums almost mutually exclusive, how can a person liking blue can now like raavan also, and how can a person liking raavan might have liked blue also? Those persons who appreciates everything, their appreciations get discounted and they are seen as creating a hype. Everything can't be equally great. Such persons need to individually introspect and find what he stands for and what he doesn't identify with, and then appreciate certain things that he stands for and criticize certain things that he doesn't identify with. People can make out what is forced appreciation and what is undue criticism. -- Thanks a gig to Mani, he had given us ARR for the first time 18 years ago. And he has now re-given us our very same ARR, cured of oscar aberration. -- Rawat
