The Underrated Brilliance of Indian Thriller Music

Released by Finders Keepers in 2011, the compilation "Bollywood Bloodbath" highlights the best psych and disco in the country's film industry.

If you've ever asked me to discuss my favorite albums, I've mentioned Bollywood Bloodbath: The B-Music of The Indian Horror Film Industry at some point. Not surprisingly, some people flinch at the name and cover art: the depiction of seven actresses, their faces etched in fear and despair, photoshopped into six bloodcycles dripping from a werewolf. Unless you're familiar with the producers listed on the front cover, there’s no indication of what the music will be. In turn, some listeners would rather stay away from it. It just looks too weird.

Playing the album, though, you quickly learn that it’s a straight-ahead dance record with some of the best sonics you’ve ever heard. That it sounds like a vestige works to its benefit; the murky mix emphasizes the album’s ghostly theme. Keep peeling the onion, and you find that composers Rajesh Roshan, Sonik Omi, Bappi Lahiri, Sapan Jagmohan, R.D. Burman, and the duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal compiled a seamless set of lo-fi funk and disco with darting electronics and stampeding drums, the right soundtrack for an early-‘80s slasher flick or an underground rave at an illegal nightclub. It thrives due to the respective brilliance of its composers. Each one had a slightly different sound that led to the album’s cohesion.

As the writer Sarah Sahim reported in this Pitchfork feature, the union of music and Bollywood goes back a century, the songs being the biggest selling point for the films. “If you don’t have a killer joint in there,” Sahim wrote, “your movie might as well cease production immediately.” When the ‘60s were in full swing, Bollywood films featured psychedelic dance tracks in the vein of what the Beatles and the Doors were creating at the time. As the ‘70s took hold and psych-rock gave way to disco as the dominant genre in the U.S., the Bollywood film industry responded in kind: Desi Disco became a thing not only in the movies, but on dance floors across India as well. The majority of Bollywood Bloodbath features music from the early '80s, when psych and disco cross-pollinated to something equally quirky and vigorous.

The album masterfully highlights this blend by showcasing top tracks alongside the names who kept bodies moving in nightclubs and movie theaters. Hemant Bhole’s “Sansani Khez Koi Baat,” with its loud drums and standout vocal feature from his mother, Asha, was the title cut of Sansani: The Sensation, Irshad’s 1981 film about a series of grisly murders that occur near a burial ground. Jagmohan’s “Sote Sote Adhi Rat,” my favorite song on the album (and one that I often include on radio shows and playlists), is exceptional funk-rock with stomping percussion and vocals by the singer Salma Agha, who earned notoriety later after releasing a cover album of Abba hits sung in Hindi. The track appeared in Sher Jeng Singh’s 1983 film Siskeyan, a rare thriller never released to VHS. Then there’s Roshan’s “Superman, Superman,” a hypnotic pop tune. Featured in the movie Sannata, the song is bolstered by a festive rhythm and a trio of singers — Ursula Vaz, Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik — whose interplay brings bright flourishes to the film’s dark tenor.

Other tracks are transitional yet no less important to the setlist. The opening cut, “Sannata Theme,” works as a wandering love song, its drifting aura equally romantic and lovelorn, the perfect intro for the Ramsay Brothers’ crime saga of the same name. Bhole’s “Ab Kahan Jayenge Ham (Sad)” harbors the same spirit: A light dusting of strings and hand drums, it was positioned as an interlude on the soundtrack for Sansani, and prevails here as a soft landing following the cosmic groove of “Sote Sote Adhi Rat.”

Ultimately, I adore Bollywood Bloodbath because it plays to all of my artistic sensibilities. I’ve always been a sucker for anything vintage — old movies, old footage, old music — and that it sounds like something I’d play on early ‘80s MTV makes it that much better for me.

It also challenged my perspective: When I stumbled upon it during my time at Bandcamp Daily, it reminded me that good music lives everywhere, and that the best art doesn’t need to sound glossy and overly produced. By all accounts, this music was recorded on cheap equipment, but it's just as vital as anything captured in the far-too-expensive studios we tend to trumpet in the States. Bollywood Bloodbath is a triumph, no matter when or where it was produced. All you need is an open mind.