Avial’s music has already drawn a sizable cult following, visible on their myspace page, which speaks volumes about the accolades they’ve received from around the world. The band has even caught the attention of Rolling Stone-India — the international music magazine has hailed guitarist Rex

Vijayan as one of India’s best axe-men. Their music video, too, went on air recently. Avial—especially dexterous guitar player Rex and multi-faceted vocalist-DJ Tony John (involved with the contemporary dance group Daksha Seth)—certainly took their time (two years), to mould their sound and attitude.

“We did not have a definite sound in mind when we started out. Only a certain standard of sound design and quality,” says Rex. Tony explains the band’s electronic bent of mind, saying, “We experimented with sounds with the help of gadgets. We produced new sounds using guitar and synth pieces and scratched them.”

Although Malayalam is not the best language to be moulded into rock music, it came quite naturally to the band. “It was not that much of a challenge,” says Rex. “Film songs, on the other hand, might have been more challenging to give a rock flavour.”

The band is keen to get the attention of Indian listeners as well as a global audience; they’ve consciously inculcated a transgenic sound, for a wider reach. “We certainly had the global audience in mind,” says Rex. “The music has to take it from where the lyrics have stalled,” he added. However, even a local might find it hard to interpret the lyrics, as most of it has been picked from works of poets and writers like Kavalam Narayana Panicker, Engadiyur Chandrashekaran, P B Girish and Sudhi Velamanoor.