Maya Songs - Music Review

Ramesh S Kannan

Maya, Supernatural horror film came in the media buzz mainly because of Nayanthara as a lead and another interesting thing is that the film is directed by debutant Ashwin  Saravanan who is a techie drop out to chase his dream of making feature films. Since horror films is a latest trend in Tamil Movie Industry as of now, let’scheck out whether debutant music director Ron Ethan Yohan plays his part different or conventional one. 

ThoongaKangal:

ThoongaKangal is a haunting solo track which rides mainly on the confident vocals of ShakthishreeGopalan. The haunting track will be incomplete without piano and here too piano dominates the arrangement. Orchestration shifts toward soft rock towards the end while Guitars and drumming bring together an ambience of the song in an engaging manner throughout the song.

AayiramAayiram:

AayiramAayiram starts off in a spooky manner with bell sounds and other eerie ambience paves the way for the hard rock guitars and drumming although nothing special with the rock arrangements apart from sporadic piano keys. But the highlight is ever reliable Chinmayi'skickass vocals in an unheard genre and she owns the song with her spot-on rendition.

NaaneVaruven:

Swetha Mohan aces the free flow tunewith her mellifluous rendition which is more like soliloquy rather than as a tune and Ron Yohan kept the orchestration minimal while Swetha's nuanced singing along with lovable humming throughout the song takes the front stage. Progressive string sections along with Piano keys complement the singer very well in this unique unstructured composition. 

Theme Tracks:

Hope and Despair as eponymous to the title orchestration also follows up and downs with brilliant intriguing string sections and Piano laden interplay. The theme is filled with silence in the mid -way and ends with upbeat string sections. Always a woman is also filled with piano and strings backed by the chorus and the theme turns interesting as it progresses where strings reach the crescendo. Darkest hour, best of the lot is apt to the title, starts in an eerie way and the arrangements are truly splendid which brings out the required mood in a perfect manner. Overall debut composer gave rich expansive as well as haunting score for the horror movie with his theme tracks which works well with visuals rather than standalone tracks though each theme track is considerably of longer duration.

Verdict: Ron Yohan's debut is commendable and composer proves his mettle in his first movie with genre oriented songs. Surely songs and score prop up the visuals especially rich theme tracks elevate the visuals of the movie.

Rating:3/5

Pick of the Album:  ThoongaKangal, AayiramAayiram, NaaneVaruven