Singer-Composer Leslee Lewis makes Bollywood playback comeback after 26 years

Veteran singer-composer Leslee Lewis is set to make a comeback as a playback singer in Hindi cinema after a gap of 26 years, marking a significant moment in his long musical journey. Known for shaping India’s Indi-pop movement in the 1990s, Lewis is returning with the song Zorr Ka Dhakka, which will mark his re-entry into Bollywood playback singing. Lewis rose to national fame as part of the iconic duo Colonial Cousins alongside Hariharan. Their fusion of Indian classical and Western pop in the mid-1990s helped redefine the independent music scene in India and earned them international recognition, including the MTV Asia Viewer’s Choice Award and the Billboard Viewer’s Choice Award. Speaking about his return, Lewis shared his excitement about reconnecting with Bollywood after decades. “I was relevant then and I’m still relevant now,” he said while discussing his comeback and his continued passion for music. He added that singing for a composition by another musician after so many yea...

Slade in Flame review – Midlands glam rockers offer A Hard Day’s Night meets Get Carter

The 1975 musical satire is a curious amalgam of madcap comedy and Brit realism as the band ride the giddy highs and brutal lows of the 70s music industry

Here is Slade’s movie musical satire from 1975, a film with all the pungent historical presence of a pub ashtray, about an imaginary band called Flame which looked and sounded a lot like Slade, fronted by Stoker, played by Noddy Holder. It came out a year after the film’s soundtrack album was released, and now gets a rerelease for its 50-year anniversary. Slade in Flame – which is to say, Flame, starring Slade – is regarded by fans and non-fans alike with enormous affection and regard, and it certainly has a weird, goofy energy: the audio mix sometimes surreally privileging ambient sounds such as doors closing and glasses chinking, with the dialogue way in the background.

It’s about an innocent working-class Midlands band getting taken up by creepy adman-type smoothie Robert Seymour, played by Tom Conti, who exploits their raw talent for cash and takes them on a rollercoaster ride of fame, the action regularly suspended while the band sing their various tracks. But then their former manager, dodgy cockney mobster Mr Harding (Johnny Shannon) reappears – a man who never gave a hoot about them in their early days and contributed nothing to their career – demanding his share of the action. So it bizarrely mixes the madcap comedy of A Hard Day’s Night – or a late-period Carry On – with the brutal nastiness of a crime thriller like Get Carter. The effect is striking, in its way, but finally somehow depressing in a way that isn’t entirely intentional, and depressing in a way that actually listening to Slade is not. It also shows the unexpected influence of a particular kind of Brit social realism with a generic loyalty to unhappiness.

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