By Satyajit, Bollywood Trade News Network

After series of forgettable musical debacles, veteran Anu Malik is expected to be hoping for an optimistic resurrection this year with strings of promising musical releases. ANAMIKA -THE UNTOLD STORY, a low profile psycho-thriller romantic drama stems out to be his first project that has its lean share of delights and successes. Unfortunately the exhibit is too meager and sloppy in its offerings that the endeavor fails completely in rewriting Anu Malik back into the much desired slot of today's hot-shot music composers. Shaan's fabulous voice that has enthralled us all in solo soft rock ballads makes the brightest sparkle in the album with Anu's most refined set of upbeat arrangements in his remarkably conceived "Aashiqui". It hails its inspiration from Pritam's South-Asian style of soft rock ballad where subtle rock elements along with enthuse chorals strike chords with pleasing wordings. The track has intriguing romantic impulse in its daunting background appeal that gets emoted well with compelling percussive overtures and Sameer's expressive lyrical works. "Aashiqui" marks the first noteworthy arrival of Anu Malik in the marquee but still its far way from anything that can be termed as "chartbusting". After upbeat and flourishing musical moves, Anu relives back to his old-fashioned 80's flair in "Shagufta Dil", a "teasing-pleasing" romantic number about alluring beloved in a vociferously flashy ways. It initiates with "Hitchkokian" musical binge (???) and then gets itself shaped into stereotypical loud disco musical maneuvers where unwanted echoing, resonating, drumming and shrilling of instruments create an overtly jarring impression. Shaan's voice is wasted in earsplitting screechy and boisterously baritones and trendy "Salsa" musical moves hardly any substance to its harmonic quotient. It's too high on machines and noises than on music or vocals and like many of Anu's previous rejected numbers, it adds to the list of his malfunctions. The intriguing and intimidating melodic overtures of Aadesh Srivastava's "Gustakhiyan" (AANKHEN (2002)) forms expressive inspiration of inundating daunting appeal as they gets unconvincingly and sluggishly transformed into folksy pop rendition in average sounding "Laagee Laagee". Sunidhi Chauhan propels out in pub crooner binge in her coarsely vocals while Krishna completes the formality of being ardent background vocalist. It's lackluster and overtly outmoded presentation in monotonously sounding composition will be adding more worries to the prospects of the album. Anu Malik's racy and thriving musical moves gets into foot-thumping dancing floor acts as it gears up high for "folk-fusion" style of musical "dhamaka" in "Aayo Re". The track kick-starts off with Rajasthani's welcoming traditional phrases and get followed by another haphazardly and boisterously set of sloppy arrangements. Sunidhi Chauhan's taxes her vocal chords to the extreme and music goes all burst but the resounding and tantalizing impact of enticing listeners through its catchy appeal is strikingly missing. Anu has lost its magical touch that was once observed in folksy tracks like "Mera Piya Ghar Aaya" (YAARANA (1995)) and this comes out as big regret for all his and Sunidhi's fans. It's "club" remix version delivers added bouncy disco beat fillers that has captivating thump but still its all together a washout affair. "Saath", an extra enthused disco track brings on the unimpressive vocal textures of Anu Malik along with Sunidhi Chauhan in preposterously planted garish arrangements that finally show the dearth of Anu's incompetence. It's loud and racy impulse brings memories of "Aksar" (AKSAR) but the percussions and keyboard/synthesizer generated musical thump is too loud and ear-deafening to consume. Anu's unimposing vocals followed by disarrayed rap rendition makes it's even worse and it all ends up as complete listening disaster for its listeners. Even its pub-friendly trendy remix version has its routine disco beat moves that fail to save this stridently ear-deafening track for a predictable disaster. Avoidable!!! Barring the exception of audibly pleasing "Aashiqui", all the tracks of ANAMIKA-THE UNTOLD STORY ranges from average to poor and disappoints completely with their outmoded and shoddy display. Anu Malik's second coming has started off on a dull note with no soundtracks showing any promise to even survive, leave alone its striking success. Do watch out for this space when Anu's most ambitious MISSION ISTANBUL and WOODSTOCK VILLA arrive...!!! Rating - 1/5