Amy’s 2018 Music Highlights

3. Amit Trivedi – Manmarziyaan Soundtrack

Indian music film composers work. They work a lot. At times, Amit Trivedi works on the full soundtrack of 4-6 films a year. This 2018, Trivedi’s done the full tracks for Pad Man, Bhavesh Joshi Superhero, Kedarnath, and this one (which, duh, is my favorite), on top of several tracks for Andhadhun, Fanney Khan, Helicopter Eela, Abhinay Deo’s Blackmail, The Extraordinary Journey Of The Fakir and Raj Kumar Gupta’s Raid.

There’s also four South remakes (Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam) of Vikas Bahl’s hit Queen, and apparently they are using Trivedi’s music again.

I haven’t even had the time to watch Manmarziyaan yet.

You can use the music service of your choice, though iTunes carries a version with 10 tracks and another one with 14 tracks. The 14-track is also available for stream on Saavn or Spotify.

2. Aterciopelados – Claroscura

It’s been a decade since the release of Rio, a decade which saw the change of not only the music scene, the political scene and our lives (many may already have family of their own, problems of their own), but there has also been changes in the promotion of music, the development of social media, which has -for better or worse- heightened every aspect of our lives.

So it’s nice to have Aterciopelados kitsch lo-fi hippie selves back talking about the complementing duality of Andrea Echeverri and Hector Buitrago; collaborating with vallenato musician Jorge Celedon or alternative pop musician Ana Tijoux; and having Echeverri comically pondering on what the passing of time is doing to her body or talking about serious topics such as society’s expectation of women’s bodies and violence against them.

Aterciopelados’ Claroscuro is available in the music service of your choice.

1. Chen Lee (陈粒) – Playlist (玩)

Chen Lee or Chen Li is a musician is a musician I discovered a couple of years ago when randomly clicking on Ru Ye (如也) back when it released. This year she released Playlist, a beautiful album that combines melodic pop rock with electronic music without ever stopping being intrinsically Chinese, resembling Imogen Heap in her Frou Frou days. Especially in that collaboration with Sodagreen’s Qing, Kong Wu (空舞) [1], which only seems to be included in the version available on KKBox or the physical version. Low-key shade.

It’s a beautifully crafted album, though.

You can listen to Chen Lee/Chen Li’s Playlist on iTunes, Spotify or KKBox. You can also buy a physical copy on YesAsia (!!!), which I just found.

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So that’s it~ These have been some of my favorite albums [though very few compared from last year].

What music have you all been listening to?