And approximately a century later, I have come back to listening to entire albums in a sitting. Or at least, that's how long it feels since the last time I did that.
In classic millennial fashion, I blame this period of album-less meanderings of my music-consumption routine on the emergence of a plethora of things like "singles", "audio teasers", echo-chamber economics of algorithm-curated infinite-playlists... you get the gist. As my world moved on from plopping a cassette tape and sitting through it for an hour or two, with the only break being flipping it to Side B, some of us also seem to have moved on from listening to the whole album, slowly but steadily replaced by these infinite playlists of a mish-mash of songs from across multiple artists or multiple albums, often similar in genre or content. And in recent times, thanks to the diktats of profit-seeking expense-minimising greediness, AI-generated music too.
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Circa 2007-8
Young Druchan pops on the earphone from Rakesh's iPod. AR Rahman just dropped Khwaja mere khwaja and it's captured in all its glory in a single mp3 file Rakesh managed to swipe from somewhere.
I remember the excitement of that album's (Jodhaa Akbbar) launch. Untroubled by any of these silly work/life shenanigans, and enjoying newfound freedoms as a college-going teen, music was much more than a hobby or a pastime. At this time, access to great earphones was becoming easier so one could often listen to songs from albums almost just as the composer intended, not just in quality but in crystal-clear isolation of the various layers infused in the song.
For weeks after, songs from that album kept resonating through my computer. We won't talk about the rampant mp3 piracy though.
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Now
Amidst this rant, I do realise that albums are still a thing. People do listen to albums. Maybe not in a single sitting — we have far too many distractions hit our lizard brain. A monk's prayer in a Tibetan cave is punctuated by notification dings from Instagram or Tiktok or both.
Movie albums, specifically, are still a thing here in India. And yet, a sea of difference between how we used to talk about albums in the past and now. I mean, I hardly get to listen to or talk about albums as a whole today, versus, spending an entire evening discussing, dissing, celebrating, or debating an album with friends. The musical world, in keeping with the generational evolution of content formats (read: shorter, dopamine-hit-addicted, attention-deficit-driven content) has also de-emphasised the production and release of albums. Instead, singles and teasers and the likes rule the roost.
Take any major streaming platform; product designers appear to be in cahoots — all interface is about playlists that are designed to hook you into a mindless-trance of tracks. But where's the journey? An album is a journey, a curated playlist is now usually a cautionary tale.
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Circa 2002
School-going Druchan plops the audio cassette he's found in the rack under the television stand into the walkman, puts on the headphones and hits play. He doesn't know it yet but he is going to get addicted to this Aalavanthan album he's just put on. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, he is going to play it to death. The other people in the family are thankfully spared the aural nuking because the songs play exclusively for him on the headphones.
That schoolboy discovers a few interesting things: albums are great entertainment, Kamal Haasan is a great singer, and this trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy can make some of the finest music.
It's a miracle the walkman or the audio cassette did not end up damaged in the process.
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Now
To sit through an album is a thing. It's a thing that feels different from how it felt ages ago doing the same thing. And it feels no different at the same time. In the case of movie albums, it is almost like watching a shorter version of the movie again. Indie albums are a journey of a different kind. It's like having a long, sometimes patient, conversation with the artist where you let the artist speak the most.
In the age of audio cassettes, skipping a song meant pressing the fast-forward and waiting for a few seconds and then hitting play in the hopes that you had forwarded the tape just enough. The act of landing at the right spot in the tape so that you have forwarded the previous song, and hit the right spot to start the next seemed like a game. Eyes would go wide if you did that right. Almost like stopping the stop-watch one millisecond before it rang.
The advent of Winamp-like interfaces made all that an effortless, drama-less click. One, single, click. Extremely accurate fast-forwarding. And with that came the affordance of being able to jump ship on a track as soon as you're disinterested or distracted. But I think that's the counterpoint of an album: you dont have to "suffer" through a track you totally dislike, but sitting through an album is also about listening to the artist's track even when it isn't "music to my ears". And therein lies our generational struggle with being able to give an ear to things we do not necessarily agree with, from people who are on the other side, about things that do not matter as much to us.
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Most of my album-faring days have been filled with Rahman's movie music. Occasionally, there's an Indian Ocean or Agnee (or in the rare event, even Agam). Sometimes, a random album pops up in references mentioned by someone like Rick Beato and I would go listen. A couple of John Mayer's have also found their way into my world.
The most memorable one is Lagaan, in early 2000s. I borrowed a fifty from dad and purchased the audio cassette. This was the first album I purchased although every little detail about the purchase is lost now. There are only two shops that I could have purchased this from: a Landmark shop in Nungambakkam or a modest, dark-roomed, air-conditioned shop on the Choolaimedu High Road that was close to where I went for violin classes. Neither of these shops exist today, obviously.
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Circa late-1990s
The BPL television is atop a stand that also houses a shelf full of cassettes. A thin, small Druchan, barely ten that year, pulls out the only cassette that stands out in its casing. On the album cover, Rajinikanth (a film superstar in South India) poses. The cover screams Muthu in Tamil font. There are two other faces on the cover, circumscribed in tiny corners. Of the three faces — Ravikumar (the director of the movie), Rahman (the music composer) and Rajinikanth (the lead actor, the money-machine for the movie essentially) — the boy only recognises the superstar. It would take a decade or so for him to realise the contributions and importance of the other two to the Tamil cine scene.
An old portable audio system stands by, ready to do the bidding of the ten-year-old master. Muthu goes into it. Play. And the fireworks begin.