Music directors in the industry may have perfected the formula to compose a soothing melody or an outrageously funky Hip Hop number for a lead pair in a Tamil film that is hitting it off onscreen. But Vikram Sarathy R, music director of the soon-to-be-released film Perumaan, has taken a different route. In his debut album for the film, he has composed the first dubstep song in Tamil film music. The song, Om Om Siva..., has been sung by Madana Gopal and the rap portions have been done by Sricharan (Of Ennamo Edho from Ko fame). “The orchestration of the song is completely based on Dubstep, but the vocal lines are different and have a carnatic ring to them,” explains Vikram.
Instead of choosing to go the usual way, using the combination of Hip hop and Trip hop (down-tempo electronic music), Vikram used his musical background to experiment with Dubstep. “Unlike the original Dubstep genre, there will be a better lyrical clarity to this song,” says the 21-year-old. “I had to do this to suit the Tamil audience.”
Vikram, a final year engineering student from Sathyabama University, has composed four songs out of the total six songs in the film. “I’ve tried to compose each of the four songs in a different genre. There is also one classical fusion,” he reveals. Doing its rounds online is the kuthu song Soppana Sundari, which has been sung by Vikram himself. He claims that he is completely against music directors singing songs for their own albums by using technology to change the nature of their voices, but he has an explanation. “The director of Perumaan, Rajesh Kannan, who has also written the lyrics for all the songs and even sung a few of them, was very particular that I sing Soppana Sundari,” Vikram says. “I sang the rough demo of the song for him and after that, even though I presented to him other voices for the song, he was adamant that I sing it.”
Vikram also admits that there was a better response to the kuthu and melody songs than the Dubstep number. “People here still need to get used to it,” he says. According to Vikram, music director G V Prakash, with whom Vikram has been working as a keyboard programmer for a few years now, has also called in to congratulate him on the Dubstep song and the rest of the album.
Vikram, who has been playing the keyboard right from the time he turned 12, is a trained musician. He swears that he wanted to become a musician after he watched superstar Rajinikanth play the keyboard in Veera. He is also part of the city-based band Staccato. After the release of Perumaan, Vikram now has three more offers on hand. “Nothing has been decided yet. But I would like to infuse world percussion and genres like Salsa and Flamenco in our film music,” Vikram says.