In the ongoing MX Player series Times of Music , in which veteran and contemporary composers rearrange and perform each other’s music in fr...
In the ongoing MX Player series Times of Music, in which veteran and contemporary composers rearrange and perform each other’s music in front of an audience, host Vishal Dadlani introduced Viju Shah as the “king of synth sounds”.
It’s apt, considering the 61-year-old Hindi film composer’s talent for incorporating into his tunes heavily synthesised rhythm sections drawn from synthpop, deep house and new age music. These influences were most strongly felt in his soundtracks for Rajiv Rai’s thrillers. Writer-director Atul Sabharwal (Powder, Aurangzeb) has recruited Shah to compose “1980s-style synth music” for his upcoming Netflix film Class of ‘83, Shah told Scroll.in.
On the Times of Music episode of June 20, a stream of analogue blips and bloops ran through Shah’s take on Mithoon’s Tose Naina and Aankhen Teri from the movie Anwar (2007). In turn, Mithoon produced an exquisite version of Tip Tip Barsa Pani (Mohra, 1994), which gave greater prominence to the sensuality in Anand Bakshi’s lyrics than did the original’s uptempo arrangement.
“This is a project where our ingenuity comes across,” Shah observed. “There are no demands or pressure to use this or that beat. The arrangement is done strictly from the point of view of musicians.”
While audiophiles and music nerds geek out on Shah’s technological savvy, his lasting legacy is rooted in the strength of...
