Folk-rock band performs in city

For a band that brought the mundu and Malayali folk songs to the rock arena, Avial is pretty surprised by their fan base in India and abroad.

For a band that brought the mundu and Malayali folk songs to the rock arena, Avial is pretty surprised by their fan base in India and abroad. “If you see our Facebook group, a majority of them are not Malayalis. They don’t understand the language! I guess they connect to the music and the melody,” says Rex Vijayan, lead guitarist.

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Vijayan and his band of Kerala boys will perform tonight at Blue Frog for a debut gig to mark their website launch. “It will launch with the gig streaming live,” says Vijayan. Named after the quintessential mixed-vegetable delicacy from their motherland, it’s no surprise that the band’s first commercial venture too is a feature film, Salt and Pepper in Mala-yalam. The band has since won Rahman’s and Farhan Khan’s admiration.

Their newest experiments will be seen in the forthcoming album, slated to launch in July this year. But with line-up changes over the years, the Mallu rockers’ sophomore album will mark a paradigm shift from their debut.

Though at the core Avial will remain a fusion of native folk music and alternative rock, their second album will bid farewell to the head spin of Nada nada… to make way for more ambient sound. “The songs will be more radio-friendly and on the lines of world music. They will be mellow, rather than heavy riffs of our debut,” confirms Vijayan.

Avial performs at Blue Frog on January 10 at 9 pm.
* Entry: Rs 300.