The Score Magazine October 2019 | Page 25

ravenous intensity on Indian hip-hop. So, he began to reach out to Mumbai rappers via Instagram to put together a series of idiosyncratic, impossible-to-ignore tracks that channel the city’s grime and glitter through the voices of its toughest children. Funny thing, Aakash doesn’t actually speak or understand Hindi too well, given his long stint in foreign shores. He found the voices that spoke to him, and trusted them to tell their own stories. Interestingly, even though there are multiple voices and personalities in the album, none of them feel like they don’t belong. Hindi and Urdu wordplay tickles the imagination in Khamakha. Rehta High scrapes out the sole preoccupation of a decided stoner - the grief is palpable amidst all the drug-addled flexing. Game Over is an exercise in underdog pluck presented with scotch-smooth yet spitfire verbiage. Darr is a firecracker that spits in the face of fear, replacing apprehension with rage. Wazan Hain offers bleeding testimony for a bad world that never changes, no matter how many insist that "Humko shanti chahiye". Khauf is a searing condemnation of the terror bred by a society that demands excellence of its inhabitants while providing nothing to build it off. Hapless anger, mental illness and intractable desolation are given life in Maharya's relentless resentment. Khauf becomes a grotesque ode to the anxiety of merely being alive. Every track provides fodder for the soul. Outrage about broken childhoods, despair over fractured adulthoods and aching acceptance of too much that seems to have gone wrong. It is a quintessential hip-hop album that celebrates the genre by using it for its original purpose - lay bare the plight of the oppressed. It takes no prisoners, shoots straight from the throat and effortlessly becomes one of the most luminous additions to the garden of desi hip-hop. My Place to You (Easy Wanderlings): A band with artistic maturity in the vein of Easy Wanderlings usually finds it hard to replicate the sombre delights of their debut. Simply put, once you enchant an audience with a certain kind of insight, it's hard for them to relate with another layer of differently- flavored existentialism. But Easy Wanderlings is getting there. In the follow up to their roll-off-the- tongue folksy debut As Written in the Stars, there’s a sense of deepening conviction. As in its predecessor, My Place To You invites the listener to curl in and introspect. The songs are ripe with powerful melodic arrangements - powerful because there is abundant restraint being exercised by a clearly skilled ensemble. In Beneath The Fireworks, this restrain crackles with charm and nuance. They sandpaper out any frills and keep the focus simmered on creamy vocals that hint at the hurts of adult expectation. The weight of responsibility sits heavy, but Sanyanth Naroth, Sharad Rao and Pratika Gopinath sing those ineffable sorrows into something your browbeaten soul can take shelter in. Madeline carries that ultimately unnameable grief of a parent who looks upon their child and anticipates the disappointments that life will heap upon them. A winnowing flute leads into cinematic textures that give the listener space to fall in love. The lyrics beckon an old-world comfort, an adult’s dream of a Sunday afternoon spent in a breezy balcony with a book that brought you joy when you were young. The light lovemaking of piano and strings is that of an old couple that has managed to stay in love. In fact, that is what the album’s dulcet euphonies are most reminiscent of. It's all familiar, brimming with the pleasure of loving old friends and well-loved childhood homes. Even the angst inherent in both songs seems bearable by virtue of the predictable-yet-desirable charm. reviews The Score Magazine highonscore.com 23