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the music of CASH: it’s a gas
After the catchy, layered and eminently entertaining Dus Vishal-Shekhar return to toss in tunes for Anubhav Sinha’s crime caper Cash. With a mission statement for catchy dance-floor ditties, the duo gleefully turn to their experimental side that gave us adventures like right here right now from BluffMaster!, the title track for Golmaal: Fun Unlimited and the songs of I See You (especially subah subah).
Golmaal’s Anushka Manchanda returns to the playful layered Naughty Naughty, a song that seems to take off where that last song ended into a changing palette of moods and rhythms. Although she’s the only one credited on the track, the composer duo toss in vocal refrains and bandy questions and responses all over the track. The straight-faced lyrical nonsense mixes trance samples and a strong Dhol beat, tossing in the occasional Dholak for good measure.
The trio return in zaraa bach ke jii and this time everyone gets a singing credit. Thematically this might very well qualify as an alternative title song. The song contains several rapping breaks of various speeds boasting influences from DnB, dancehall and ragamuffin. As far as samples, there are loops and runs on the rabaab, bass loops, synthesized swirls and Dhol-taashe (heck! The song even ends with what sounds like a riff played on the edakka). The melodic fragments use Punjabi lyrics (and Shekhar gets to belt out these sane portions of the song). Vishal and Anuskha handle the rap segments with Vishal indulging in the fast rapping that even embellishes the title track.
Dus lyricist Panchhi Jalonvi’s sole contribution to this album raham kare is one of the four songs that Sunidhi Chauhan gets to exercise her vocal prowess on. The music combines a disco vibe and trance with dancehall; Vishal’s scatting peppers the breaks in a song that, like zaraa bach ke jii moves away from the familiar mukha.Daa-a.ntaraa song structure.
Mind-blowing maahiyaa deserves an award simply for the most precarious Hinglish blend in a long time (you’re my mind-blowing maahiyaa, to be precise). Bellyaches aside, this one and raham kare share common ground with I See You’s haalo haalo, although raham kare operates deeper within the soundscape than Mind-blowing maahiyaa does. Sunidhi lends the song the gusto seen in sajanaajii waarii waarii from Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. to a song that is, at some level of intent, a cousin of mummy se naa kahanaa from Chocolate. With a whistle riff (à la subah subah in I See You) and a swirling bass riff, this is the only song without Vishal’s toasting.
After having imported hip-hop and dancehall into Hindi film music, Vishal-Shekhar tackle reggaeton with naa puuchh. Atop the riddim comes an Indian-sounding melodic motif and the synthesized bass riff somehow echoes the bass riff in Qurbani’s har kisii ko. Into the mix of a familiar mukha.Daa-a.ntaraa structure comes Vishal’s manic fast rapping run through overdubs and a vocal break taking off on a boatman’s call.
Ironically, as with I See You, my favourite track happens to be the first cut on the album, which, in this case, is also the track that seems destined to run with the opening credits. In addition to suspected substance abuse, Vishal-Shekhar had Misirlou and Dick Dale and perhaps even Dame Un Kiss by Franco “El Gorilla” on their minds while swimming in the sea of their usual dancehall and hip-hop influences. The track’s brass lead-in gives way via an alveolar trill to a fast circular staccato electric guitar lick. Vishal starts off first, followed by the versatile Sunidhi backed by samples of car horns and a descending surf guitar riff sends the microphone to Shekhar to deliver the first melodically regular segment of the song. The alveolar trill becomes a motif of rendition, showing up prominently in Sunidhi’s a.ntaraa. In the punchbowl of percussion, car horns, the guitar riff and vocal exhortations (including invocations of the film’s title) comes a sample “Visual 8128.78; This should be played at high volume … preferably in a residential area”: The second part is a sample from the introduction to Lyrical Gangbang on Dr. Dre’s influential album The Chronic. The first is most likely a reference to the name of a track by Physical Motion (Coincidentally, that’s also the stardate, according to ST3, when a dying Spock asks if the ship is out of danger). There’s another sound sample that Vishal trades vocals, but I’m not sure where that comes from. If you’re listening to this track on heaphones, there’s even (unless I’m hearing things) what sounds like a child humming along as Sunidhi reprises the lines of the first a.ntaraa near the 3:22 mark.
An extended mix of the title track closes the album: in this version the overall volume goes up, the surf guitar lick gets phased and multi-tracked, the trills are enhanced and the soundscape is peppered with more breaks and slower arrangements; all this makes the cut less immediate than the original.
Lyrics are included in the CD sleeve in case you want to decipher all that spitting on the album, but zaraa bach ke jii … they don’t get them quite right (all wrapped around the finger becomes the egregious all wrapped around there[sic] fingers).
As with Dus, the soundtrack might be the best part of the package; with a cast roster that includes the likes of Suniel Shetty, Zayed Khan and Esha Deol, would it be an act of unfathomable optimism to expect a coherent entertaining film?
15 Responses to “the music of CASH: it’s a gas”
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Have you seen one of the promo video in which all those actors look :-& ? i forgot name of the song. lol, yeah, ‘Mind Blowing Mahiya’, is…. agree with ya on the lyrics.
anyway, i personally do not like the music.
HG: It’s a very very difficult exercise to separate the songs from the visuals :) A lot of songs that I enjoyed listening to have been irrevocably destroyed by the picturisation. I’ve seen some of the promos for this film, but having bitten the Dust once, I wasn’t too surprised. This soundtrack and the soundtrack of I See You will probably work best for me as long as I block out all the images I’ve seen of the on-screen damage :d.
Also, most of my notes above are about the music and the arrangements and not really about the lyrics (which, although adventurous in their own way, are quite limited by the need to be amenable to star-studded non-sequitur breaks laden with faux cool vibes and family-rated eye candy).
I miss a Vishal-Shekhar ballad on this soundtrack … something that’s probably missing for the reasons I cited above for the lyrics.
wow, this is so cool! Thanks a ton, George, for pushing the envelope for music reviewing. I am gonna read this over and over and mug up all the terminologies! Jus’ kiddin’.
On Cash, I got my dope from the title track and ‘zara bach ke jee’, I am more hooked to the latter these days. and i have pretty much given up on the made-while-shagging music videos. Though the new video of the title track has some nice elements from the now-veteran video guy, Anubhav Sinha, I think he is making more of extended videos now instead of films after he made that tear-jerker-with-its-heart-in-its-place called Tum Bin.
Vishal Shekhar are doin reasonable good considering the other bloopers in the contemporary film music scene, I just wish at least they dont put those taken for granted yo!baby!put ur hands ina de air fillers, its become intolerable now, give me a Kailasa any day. and its time they stopped making those maha-family-night-get-together-friendly-talent shows appearances, they are getting badly infected increasingly by the hour, their music is going down from Bluffmaster dayz. Still waiting for their hip-hop album with AB.
btw, you play anything?
doesn’t anyone sense a hangover of Pulp fiction start sequence credit song in the song “Cash is the left of me …” ????
:-?
Kartik: already noted :) (Misirlou, Dick Dale)
oops My bad - didnt know the Misirlou, Dick Dale connection …
Tushar: Thanks for the kind words :)
As regards the “put your hands up in the air now” bit: I can attest to having chuckled on hearing that bit the first time (the same held even for don’t be talking to a stranger on the title track of Ek Ajnabee); the cast of the film also biased me against the songs; once I managed to dump the associated baggage, I could appreciate the soundtrack for what it was worth —
the duo has been conjuring interesting blends in Home Delivery, the qawwaalii in Tathastu, the delightful James Brown tribute in Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd.’s alabelaa alabelaa … while efforts like Salaam Namaste and the morphologically similar Ta Ra Rum Pum seem like relatively less exciting extensions of the kind of song represented by chham se in Dus, one also gets Vishal’s interesting rendition in saaiyaa.N.
The hip-hop album with the junior B would be interesting, of course; I wonder if the project has gone into development hell by now …
As for their appearances on TV talent shows: I managed to catch a clip of their version of allaah ke ba.nde and got a chance to see the energy and gusto that goes into the making of their songs. It’s all part of the mandates of PR — the things you have to do. As long as it doesn’t have a direct impact on the promise of their music, I don’t really mind :)
George, there are many Home Delivery lovers here at PFC, and they will testify we love the songs and the film. Though personally, I feel there were many holes in it, but was still way better than the other contemporary attempts at comedy.
HD is one soundtrack I have enjoyed a lot apart from Pyar mein kabhi kabhi. I also relished ‘Aajmaale’ quite a lot during its airplays, along with the quirky ‘Mumbaai nagariya’ from Taxi no 9211.
On the TV shows, you should see the recent episodes man, your fondness for them will dwindle watching them do silly things like singing poor versions of Cash songs on mediocre orchestration.
Their Cool Coefficient is going down if they continue this OCD.
I would like them to churn out more of hip-hop, and stick to the pure genre instead of doing imitations for making it street friendly.
i fuckin’ love the soundtrack of Home Delivery. In fact, Vishal-Shekar will admit that Home Delivery (also Shabd and maybe Karam) is one of their better work and underrated. I also am a fan of the movie.
‘Bekhudi’ from Taxi No. 9211 is also an ace song. ‘Sun Soniye’ from Musafir is also a good one.
I have not liked their recent works (Cash, Ta Ra Ra Ra, Salaam Namaste). I just think it is utter rubbish.
Aapka hi khayaal aaya tha abhi, Goonda Bhai. :)
Good that you reminded me of Karam, I love that song, ‘Tera hi Karam’. Never saw the film though apart from seeing the initial animation bits.
Can’t recall Bekhudi & Sun Soniye…
As for the Misirlou, Dick Dale influence, it might sound exaggerated but I prefer the Cash version to BEP’s Pump It. At least here they tried to turn it around a bit. Its a smartly done rehash so I don’t mind it much…
[note: the link will take you to MusicIndiaonline player]
erm, ‘Sun Soniye’ from Musafir, in the video Anil Kapoor and that wet ‘Darna Mana Hain’ girl cleaning a car…. no?
Bekhudi, is the song sung by Shaan.
Thanks for the links, Goonda Bhai.
I now remember Sun Soniye.
WOW, Bekhudi is a nice song, I am wondering how come I never heard of it!
Tushar: perhaps it’s just as well that I haven’t been able to catch their subsequent TV appearances. The quality thereof doesn’t really have any bearing on their music, but it can undeniably influence your impression of the duo. Then again, as long as these guys continue to blends their influences and produce creations that grab my attention and whet my appetite, I can live with the other stuff that they seem to have to do (the mandates of commerce and currency). They’ve been tackling various forms of urban contemporary music in most interesting ways … I’d love to see them extend their reach further back in time (my favourite example based on recent viewings is the psychedelic soundtrack for Lucio Fulci’s Four of the Apocalypse) or even turn over a new card as they did with the club/lounge explosion that was Musafir.
Tushar/HG: Glad to see that I’m not alone as far as Home Delivery is concerned … I don’t think Sujay Ghosh was aiming merely to make a comedy — there was so much more happening aurally, visually and stylistically; the “holes” seemed to have been an artifact of a narrative that often seemed to disagree with the technical ambition of the film. But, one cannot deny that it was a rewarding experience — and what more can one ask for? :)