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All articles by Pranav Dhingra
13 October 2010
Janelle Monae represents the sort of artist that comes along rarely - one that loves music passionately, and thinks it has the potential to change the world. She moulds and shapes it like a master artisan, to create forms of artistic expression that generate a spectrum of human emotions, harvesting and harnessing every possible note, instrument and octave to generate a spellbinding work of...
26 February 2010
We have discussed Kate Bush's work on Culturazzi before, and here we are again - talking about the eccentric virtuoso from the UK. Kate Bush is an artist for all times, with her mad-hat antics, her spectacular music, her masterful use of language and metaphors. Hounds of Love started it all. Hounds of Love finds Bush at the peak of her powers, where she has stayed arguably since that time, if you...
03 February 2010
If you know even a little about the premise of Funny Games - you start dreading what you are going to witness from the first frame itself. This fact alone is a commentary on how violence, and the expectation of violence has seeped into our consciousness - almost to a point where we dread its occurrence, its percolation into our own lives, and yet voyeuristically enjoy it through films, games, and...
16 December 2009
Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers made a successful run across various festival circuits in 2005 starring Bill Murray as a man running back into his past carefully picking up the flowers strewn across failed relationships and romances. On the road trip to absolution plays the fabulous Broken Flowers soundtrack. Headlining the versatile record is Ethiopian musician and composer - Mulati Astatke....
19 November 2009
Frenzied like a explosive firecracker crackling inside a small birdcage, yearning to break free - A Fine Frenzy's sophomore album, Bomb in a Birdcage is a delight. Spending two years on the road, Alison Sudol's voice is now controlled and honed, and the music and instrumentation is more expansive yet tight. One of the best songs on the album is Elements, a passionate rain-swept ballad about a...
24 October 2009
The cover of Fleet Foxes' debut album Fleet Foxes shines light at the intricate yet simple beauty the band wants to convey through their art. The cover is a a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from the 16th century. According to Wikipedia, ‘There are around 100 identifiable idioms in the scene (although Bruegel may have included others). Some are still in use today, amongst them: “swimming...
26 September 2009
The Kills' Midnight Boom is a thumping energetic record; ostensibly seems to have been deliberately made all cool, and it works well. With haphazard guitars, sounds that burst out through quiet lingering moments into a cloud of shivering energy, and tip-topping reveries about random lovers and tornadoes - it endears itself to the listener.
Arguably some of the best songs of the album have...
13 September 2009
Madonna is more than an artist now. She is a brand. She demands attention, listening, fans, critics, and press. Arguably the only musician now who demands a sizeable fraction of following which the late Michael Jackson had; she unlike the latter has continued to "reinvent" herself, if reinvention is what she has done, especially in the last few years. Madonna's gift is not a great voice, or...
31 August 2009
"Oh we flee the scene of our little crime We feel so free But the hounds of law they bite our heels As we retreat Up to the planets up to the bodies of the galaxy Of the galaxy we fly we feed we suck we bleed we need..."
With these words, M83 takes you on a rapturous journey through a reverb-filled starry night, drowsy in the pale purple glow of the northern lights, drenched in the haze of...
06 August 2009
Buy a copy of Kala by M.I.A., select any song, and pump up the volume. And enjoy a rambunctious roller-coaster of sounds, electro loops, Indian sitar and Australian didjeridoo. Slumdog Millionaire was the movie that catapulted M.I.A. to a larger audience, if Timbaland's efforts weren't enough. Deconstructing who is M.I.A. is a visual and sonic journey through her works - brimming with riotous...
30 July 2009
I listened first to Mazzy Star only a few years back, and at once was enveloped in the dreamy blanket that the band weaved with their music. Songs like Fade Into You and Rhymes of an Hour were made for a lazy day on the bed. Sandoval's smooth and intimate voice fit well with the guitar thrums of David Roback to create the "aural equivalent of longing" as one reviewer put it.
After 1996, Hope...
20 July 2009
Ellipse by Imogen Heap - Immie's army of fans can rejoice because the singer-songwriter-composer extraordinaire is back with her latest album - Ellipse. It has been four long years since Speak for Yourself came out with its electric landscape of warm fuzzy music. Imogen Heap has the sort of friendly, familiar voice you want to wrap around in. And the second album's blend of soaring electronic...
02 July 2009
Franz Ferdinand released two albums six months into 2009, pretty productive you say. Hearing Blood, their sophomore effort of the year, even if it's simply a dub remix of their first album Tonight, won't alter ideas about their productivity or talent. Blood is a smashing album throbbing with electronic beats, thrumming electric guitars, and scintillating synthesizers all creating havoc...
24 June 2009
Portishead have been an enigma to many from the day they released Dummy back in 1994, which went on to win the Mercury Prize and sell more than 150,000 copies with minimal press attention. A three-year long hiatus produced Portishead (1997) after which the band hibernated for a long eleven years, to come out with arguably their best work yet - Third. Third is a rumination of life today -...
20 June 2009
The beauty of human expression lies in its ability to spring up anywhere. The dusty land of Somalia gave rise to a thrumming beat that roused hearts across the globe (the talented Maryam Mursal), and now, a woman brought up in a tiny cabin on Galiano Island, a small island in British Columbia, has come to inspire everyone with her sprightly banjo and her intimate voice. The woman, as she calls...
09 June 2009
La Roux, French for 'The Red Haired One' is an electronic duo comprised of singer Elly Jackson, and co-writer and co-producer Ben Langmaid, that has been promising to scorch charts with their album scheduled to release late June. La Roux have however, previewed a number of tracks for the public and the songs, as well as the public reception for them has been promising.
'In For The Kill' is...
30 May 2009
Melody Gardot had a cycling accident when she was 19, and was rendered disabled. She had her pelvis fractured, her spine damaged and she suffered trauma. Now, she is "making sweet music" like the birds she commands in "If The Stars Were Mine" of her latest album. 2006 gave us the absolutely delicious Worrisome Heart. The album would almost place the listener in a cool smoky jazzhouse in The Big...
14 May 2009
Kate Bush - one of the most eclectic singer-musicians of the past century, with an oeuvre of work that includes some of the best loved, biggest hits, and most critically praised music. One of England's most successful solo female performers having sold over 20 million records, Kate Bush stands as an iconic musician. After having given us the haunting "Wuthering Heights" (The Kick Inside)...
01 May 2009
You all must have heard the alluringly sexy 'Sexy Boy' in numerous advertisements on television. This electronic number has been the soundtrack to a raft of movies, ads - with its synth -enveloped nasal voiceover propelled Air into worldwide acclaim. Air is a French electronic duo composed of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel. AIR is an acronym for Amour (Love), Imagination, and Rêve (Dream...
13 April 2009
A Mercury-Prize winning act from the United Kingdom, Antony & The Johnsons released their third album The Crying Light to universal critical acclaim in January. I heard this album in an old British mansion at a hill station over five days, in the cold mornings, the sunny afternoons and the dark nights. And like many great albums do, it became a soundtrack to a journey, a life.
The album cover...
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