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MUSIC BOX: A new concept
Gone are those days when we had just three mainstream pop bands — Vital Signs, Awaz and Junoon who released their work annually. Our top vocalists, today, constantly survey new avenues to be in the audience’s memory. They rarely join hands together, but when a multinational requests them to do a song together, they have to oblige.
Tu Hai Kahan is the latest Pakistani album that features three top names of today’s pop music, Strings, Haroon, and Junaid Jamshed. The album starts with the title song sung by the trio. The amazing guitar works and harmonious vocals along with some inspiring lyrics by JJ and Strings are spellbinding. If you have seen its video then listening to it would really give you a high! The most eagerly anticipated song Yaar Nahin Haar Dey appears next. Shoaib Mansoor has written and composed it while JJ makes his debut singing a Punjabi song. The lyrics are in line with Shoaib’s Goray Rang Ka Zamana, Sanwali and Larkiyaan in which he focuses on one concept — a village’s simple life, and subtly negates everything else in contrast. Oh Piya by Haroon follows, that has his distinct mark complete with funky beat and universal lyrics turning it into a treat for his fans. Remixes of Jado by Strings and Chan Vargay by Haroon follow the song, before the side ends with an instrumental of the title song.
On the flip side, we have remixes of Na Tu Aaegi and Goray Rang Ka by JJ, Jee Kay Daikha by Haroon and Watan by Strings. The most interesting entry is Bhoola Naheen, written by Anwar Maqsood, but surprisingly does not have the expected glimmer.
This album is a fortune of music and turns out to be a collector’s item. Do not miss it or you will miss out on a ground-breaking concept in local music.—Jawad Daud
Mechanical funk!
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England based electronic duo known as the Utah Saints, are a well-known name in the world of underground electronic music. With Two, their first album since their 1992 debut, the Saints have once again set the benchmark for sample based, beat infused with mechanical funk. Sampling had become a dying art, especially since it gained such mainstream exposure with Puff Daddy abusing it to unholy extremes, raping 80’s gems from The Police, David Bowie and other big name rock acts. The Utah Saints, however, revive the methods of madness with such power, devotion and skill that their computer generated mantras are at the same time unique pools of rhythmic depth while offering ultimate respect to the artists whose hooks they borrow.Helping to begin the journey into technical bliss is Sun, a short track with an oriental keyboard and spoken word lyrics offered by none other then R.E.M front man Michael Stipe. This is the first of Stipe’s four contributions to the album, all of which are based on a similar formula, with Stipe delivering weird diatribes over ambient beats. Power to the Beats gets things rolling in a funkier direction, with Public Enemy’s Chuck D barking over liquid keyboards and Metallica’s militant metal riffs. Love Song, despite its generic title is anything but. Its steady tempo is backed by a repeated vocal. Lost Vagueness gets high society with treated strings suddenly giving way to an impassioned vocal that sounds like its coming out of a computer voice box a la Stephen Hawking. High drama indeed!
Stipe returns with Punk Club, a hyper-fast geographical romp name checking almost every major US city. Massive is just that, a sprawling expanse of ambient landscapes that builds itself on warm yet muted strings, working its way into sampling the extremely atypical method of throat singing. The end result is close to spiritual. Rhinoceros is more of Stipe’s eccentricities, this time describing the scene from a movie of avant-garde Italian director Fellini. Morning Sun sounds like a solemn salute to Electro-synth godfathers, New Order, with a slight resemblance to their 1987 smash True Faith.
B777 was a letdown, simply because one was expecting a warp-speed thrasher in line with the aviation namesake that the band has based the title on. Rather it’s a Kraftwerk like Electro-ballad. Techknowledgy is more like it, sampling the seminal punk anthem Seek and Destroy by one of Rock’s most frenetic of iconoclasts, Iggy Pop and his Stooges. The edgy guitar riffs blend nicely with the smooth buttah-beats that create an admirable state of tension.
This album is an absolutely wicked dose of aid drenched textures, proving once and for all that the Utah Saints are a bunch of techno fiends who know how to rock.—Qasim Abdallah Moini
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