Rex Vijayan strikes the right chord

He is no stranger to music buffs. We have seen him strumming the strings and putting the fretboard on fire. Rex Vijayan, the lead guitarist of band Avial, has struck the right chord with celluloid too as his hit track ‘Theeye Theeye’ keeps on climbing the charts. A dream debut in 70 mm in fact, but the young composer insists he is not smitten by the showville yet and scoring music for ‘Chappa Kurishu’ was just a zappy career switch. He says he lapped up the offer because of the film’s experimental nature and the creative liberty it promised. “I don’t think I will fit in as a full time music maker juggling all genres of music for mainstream. Sameer Tahir is a close friend and we have worked together for a couple of ads. It was his debut directorial venture and he wanted me on board. He narrated me the plot and asked for anything that suits the storyline and that’s how exactly Chappa happened. Moreover it was pure pleasure to work with a bunch of like-minded people,” he says. Rex says he has been a complete audio addict all his life and can’t remember a phase when he had no connection with music. “My father Albert Vijayan is a musician and I grew up in close association with music. I can’t pinpoint a time when the kinship started,” he says. His rapport with strings started at the age of 14 and Rex came out with his maiden record album ‘Road to Eternity’ when he was 16.  He had his first professional association with Mother Jane, a Kochi-based band. When ‘Insane Biography’, the band’s kickoff album, was released his performance was instantly noted among the rock fraternity. “Mother Jane was my first professional rock band entry and I was with them for some time,” he says. Short stints with bands like Overdrive and Astra followed and in 1997 he received the Best Rhythm Guitarist Award. He was also part of a Munich based German hip-hop band ‘Intensive Refreshment’ rendering guitar for their recordings.  Rex entered an entirely different scene when he joined Daksha Seth’s dance company which was known for contemporary dance performances. Drawing heavily from classical forms  their shows put forth a heady mix of  kathak, ballet, kalarippayattu, yoga and gymnastics. “Touring with Daksha was a great learning experience. I travelled extensively with her troupe during which I got exposed to different sects of music and connected with musicians across the globe. Their performance was an audio-visual medley and the music it demanded was definitely odd and exotic. We used psychedelic sounds and ethnic instruments for the shows.” Avial definitely was something out-of-the-box, freakish and risky. The band created waves among the new-age headbangers with its power-packed vocals and guitar-driven, riff-infused rock. One of the members who conceptualised and formed the band, Rex was with Avial from the very beginning. “It was I who named the band Avial. We were all members of different bands who used to wonder why we are going for English lyrics. We tried it in Malayalm and found the final output more impressive as we  could express more sharply in our mother tongue,” he says. The band also kicked aside the conventional norms and reopened the doors to local folk music. “In my personal opinion folk music is the only form of music that shares the intensity and aggression of rock. That was one reason why Avial opted for folk songs, something we could easily relate to. And if we don’t use this songs now they will never reach the next generation,” he says.       Rex says though the band was quite a fad among Gen Y, their popularity skyrocketed after their big screen entry. “Though the band and it’s numbers were quite a rage among rock loving youngsters, there was an invisibility among the common crowd. It was after ‘Salt n Pepper’ and ‘Chappa Kurishu’ that I realized what films can do. The medium is so powerful that it can change your destiny overnight. It has phenomenal reach among the masses and our film endeavours could make Avial a household name within no time,” he says. Rex’s immediate film project after ‘Chappa Kurishu’ is ‘Second Show’, the launchpad for Mammotty’s son Dulquar Salman. “The director of the film Sreenath has given us full freedom and want something in our style. I am doing the background score and all the songs in the films are by Avial,” he says. Rex, who is now busy with he release of Avial’s second album and the launch of their record company Mal-Function along with Papaya Media, says as of now he has no concrete idea about his future plans. “I am not on a madcap run. There is no point in taking on maximum projects if your work is unable to leave a mark,” he adds.