Beat Box: Mr. X

A still from Mr. X

Hollow Matter

Composers: Ankit Tiwari and Jeet Ganguly

Lyricists: Mohnish Raza, Manoj Muntashir, Abhendra Kumar Upadhyay

Rating: 1/2*

It has been a while since a film from the Bhatt camp, starring Emraan Hashmi, came without an edible soundtrack. The effect the music from Mr. X leaves behind is at best parodic if not clumsy. What’s more astounding and exasperating is that the composers haven’t even made the effort to create any great oddities and darkness — something that could have worked. Composer and singer Ankit Tiwari, responsible for most of the film’s music along with Jeet Ganguly, delivers a glorified karaoke session marred by stale tunes, without a tinge of newness.

Tu jo hai in Anikit Tiwari’s voice is a mishmash of a variety of songs we’ve already heard in Arijit Singh’s voice. It also distinctly reminds one of Tu hai from Roy and Tiwari’s own Teri galiyaan. An acoustic guitar forms the prelude and the interlude and is punctuated by Tiwari’s voice, who it seems, wants to sound like Singh. He fails, thanks to stock phrasing and lack of vocal accuracy. This is followed by the title song sung by Mili Nair. The song actually has a passable beginning with a simple guitar riff. Almost 30 seconds into the song, Ganguly begins to growl You can call me X to some distorted guitars. It’s more comical than scary.

Saad shukraana by Tiwari again works with an acoustic guitar. But just after Tiwari has sung (read cried) for a little over two minutes, everything seems to get coated with ambient sounds and turns into a mushy mess. Alif se gets some life through Neeti Mohan’s vocals. But she can’t do much with a bad composition. Teri khushboo by Arijit Singh is a tolerable number but it is the song’s female version that makes some sense. Palak Muchhal lifts an ordinary composition to make it sound somewhat engaging.

Every song is half-cooked and seems to have been created in a tearing hurry. An absolute dud of an album with no recall value.

Source:: Indian Express