Bombay The Hard Way: Guns, Cars And Sitars [SOUNDTRACK]

Kalyanji Shah, Various Artists - Soundtracks - Film Scores, Anandji Shah

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 30, 1999)
• Original Release Date: March 23, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Label: Motel Records
• ASIN: B00000HYAK
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #71,200 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The Indian film-soundtrack cassettes that can be had for a couple of bucks at any Indian spice shop have long been one of the best buys in prerecorded music. Despite the fact that hundreds of fresh titles are cranked out assembly-line style each year, they maintain a remarkable consistency of quality. This CD's ostensible mission is to introduce the uninitiated hipster to the sitar-, string-, and synthesizer-laden grooves that characterize the incidental music for most "Bollywood" productions. But album producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura has heavily tampered with the original tracks, giving the songs inanely ironic new titles and even dubbing in additional drum and sitar in an effort to put his stamp on the music. Easily angered purists should steer clear; for others, it offers entertaining enough background listening. --Charley Gothic

Entertainment Weekly
If the action in these movies is reflective of Hard Way's musical bent, they must be a real howl.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sitar'ed Spy Music, A Groovy Chase Scene Through "Bollywood", July 22, 1999

By A Customer

Featuring the music of Indian composers Anandji and Kalyanji, who composed and conducted music for the so-called "Brownsploitation" films from India's 1960s and '70s "Bollywood," this is one of the latest projects of Dan "The Automator" Nakamura, Bay Area producer and music master mind behind Dr. Octagon, with additional beats credit going to DJ Josh Davis, better know as the Quannum Collective's DJ Shadow. Every track on this record sounds as though it were ripped from an American or European spy movie, but with Eastern Indian twists like sitars or Indian chord influenced moog licks. There is nothing of the classic, Middle Eastern modal sound, the kind of convoluted stuff that John Coltrane got into later in his career, but rather, Indian-ized American compositional music, very groovy and full of funk and jazz-based musical ideals. Some tracks owe to the hip-hop influences of the producers, with rough, thuggish beats emphasized and laid out over things like sitar loops, flute solos and heavy string and moog accompaniment ("My Guru," "Fists of Curry," "Punjabis, Pimps & Players"). Other tunes on the record hold truer to their original forms, with emphasis on composition, instrumentation, and most importantly, that tried and true secret agent theme, sometimes presented in go-go style ("Ganges A Go-Go," "Uptown Bollywood Nights"), other times as a surfed-out tribal, disco noise ("Swami Safari"), and other times, just some straight-up, Mission Impossible type stuff ("Fear of a Brown Planet"). With almost no lyrics-save samples from the movies themselves-and no cuts or scratches in the records, this first class joint could almost be considered an illbient album, with an East Indian lean towards The Automator's Dr. Octagon Instrumentalist and Shadow's Entroducing. Worth it for any fan of beat-based instrumental music

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars it's the absurdity that keeps me coming back, May 8, 2003

By	rex holcomb (JERSEY CITY, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

this album highlights the best of early dj shadow and dan the automator. hip hop electronic beats with solid interesting melodies. don't expect true "world music", but open your mind to the creative expressions of a handsome boy modeling school graduate and one of the hippest djs still kicking it. the little absurd sound bytes make me smile every time. if you've ever caught a preview of a mainstream indian movie with the singing and dancing or the silly low budget 70's "blackspoitation" movies, then you might find this album appealing. if you're a fan of dj shadow or the automator, then this album is a must.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still A Favorite 6+ Years After I Bought It, August 24, 2005

By	F. Levine "An Information Architect" (MD, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I first heard cuts from the CD on the University of St. Cloud (Minnesota) radio station (corporate radio isn't going to touch it!) and was intrigued, so I got the CD in 1999 and have loved it ever since.

A prevous reviewer didn't like the modern remixing of or overlays on many of the songs, but this doesn't bother me (it doesn't seem heavy-handed) and it might make the CD a little more accessible to people who aren't familiar with the genre.

The tracks are alternately "groovy", mellow, James Bond-ish, chase-scene-ish, sinister, romantic...basically a late 60's/early 70s adventure movie extravaganza with an Indian twist and a bit of 90s DJ mixing. Somehow all of it flows together, though I suspect the songs come from different movies.

This brings me to just a couple of minor gripes: although there is a great little booklet in the package that explains the sometimes odd and dangerous world of Bollywood, there are no notes about the movies these tracks came from, which leaves me curious, especially since there are some odd sound bites of actors speaking dialogue in Hindi and English--I'd like to know the context! Actually, I'd rather have the movie notes and no dialogue, because it just disrupts the flow a little for me.

This is one of the most unusual CDs I have, and it's great to work to. People who see it on my CD rack or hear me playng it are inevitably curious about it. I love it! If you're curious about the genre or like sountracks or mod/funk sounds in general, this is a nice compilation.