VIVA - Good voices!
What do you expect musically from a group of girls who are labelled as India’s answer to the Spice Girls? I guess all of us would ask for good music, some hummable tunes and saleable https://lyrics. This album has managed to a certain extent to fulfill people’s expectations, though purists may tend to shy away from it. Overall, this album is a heady mix of various kinds of music of which Techno is the one that seems to be standing out. So, here we have eight tracks all of which have been composed by different people and I guess that explains the reason for eight different numbers.
The Tracks
’Hum Naye Geet Sunayein’ composed by Shankar/Ehsaan/Loy is a good one with lyrics that announce the coming of this band. This track is a typical example of the trio’s capability to churn out modern music, they must have done this with ther eyes closed. Except for a cool bass loop there nothing much to say about this song, but it nevertheless is a good track. Vocal arrangement is excellent, and this holds good for all the songs. ’Jahan Ho Pyar Ka Mausam’ composed by Jatin/Lalit is a passe number by the duo, they don’t ever seem to recover from their Hindi movie hangover. ’Mujhe Zindagi Mein Ek Dosth Chaiye’ composed by Shantanu Moitra is about girls aspirations.
’Ja Sakte ho’ composed by Sandeep Chowta is essentially a showcase for his sound recording and mixing abilities because in this track we have tight bass flares, synthesised voices and lot of other stuff which these sound engineers crave to do. ’Kisse Poochain’ composed by Raju Singh is unique in this album for two reasons. First because this is the only track in this album where you get to hear a real instrument - the flute in the introductory music and in the first interlude and then because in this all girl voices CD we get to hear a male voice(Raju Singh) singing ’Tha na na na nana’ in the first interlude.
’Tumko Agar Pyar Mujse’ composed by Ashutosh Phatak/Dhruv Ganekar opens boombastically but doesn’t seem to sustain the buildup in throughout the song. ’Jaago Zara’ composed by Sulaiman/Salim Merchant, some would say is the pick of the album. It’s a good song with some real interesting percussion programming and really good vocal arrangement. ’Kaali Mai Diya Silai’ composed by Kersi Lord has some rhythm programming by Taufiq Qureshi, there are some fast tabla’s and voices creating rhythms.
The band
VIVA, means long live. VIVA as far as the CD cover goes is five members strong namely Mahua, Neha, Pratichee, Seema and Anoushka. They were selected by a distinguished panel of judges based on the musical abilities as well as the other aspects. Just being well-versed musically cannot make a star out of a person these days, there needs to be other skills and I don’t want to get into all that. Ironically VIVA (Long live) is only four members strong now going by the news report that I saw today. Seema is pursuing a solo career and good for her too.
Notable aspects
There’s one things all would agree, all five of them are very good singers. But then there’s very little concept in this album to show each one’s abilities except Mahua and Pratichee. Mahua seems to effortlessly hit the higher notes while Pratichee’s Classical training is evident in the small bit that she sings in the second interlude of ’Kisse Poochain’. Neha has nothing more to offer than sounding like a seductress while Anoushka and Seema, though they sing very well seem to be subtle.
Overall
This album is recommended for the way voices are arranged in each track and for the very modern feel that they exhibit. Though we don’t have any great sounding tracks we have six average tracks and two good ones which is very good for an Indipop album.