A darker, deeper genre of music brewing underground for many years streams out into the World Wide Web on AWN (All We Need) Radio, Sri Lanka’s only online radio station dedicated to rock and heavy metal music.
What began as an experiment by Keshan Wijesekara, Kamal Lazar and fellow music enthusiasts in April 2010, to satiate a growing hunger in the community, has grown into a full scale project with more than 100 listeners from Sri Lanka and all over the world, including the US, UK, Philippines, Australia and Canada, tuning in on a daily basis. Adorned with a logo designed by Dr. Milinda Salpitikorala, www.awnradio.com is making an iconic stand in the community.
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AWN Radio delves deeper into this undervalued genre of music, exploring all tastes of rock and heavy metal, both mainstream and underground. The Trip Side hosted by Thushara gives listeners a shot of psychedelic and folk rock. Kitty Nona’s show, Lost Sounds, takes a trip down memory lane, rediscovering forgotten treasures from rock ‘n roll and the “classical, trippy and psychedelic” music of the 60’s to the legendary ‘old school’ heavy metal of the 80’s and 90’s. Nathicana is a show solely dedicated to black metal, “injecting AWN Radio with large doses of Extreme Music!”.
The Freak Show on weekday mornings is a collage of everything from jazz and psychedelic to heavy, thrash and death metal.
There are no sponsors and all hosts at AWN work voluntarily. “They do it because they love this genre,” said Ravindu Wijesekera, the host of the Freak Show and the Program Manager at AWN. To Kitty Nona, AWN is the only radio station that expands music beyond the hidebound. “Music is music after all”, but there are many genres that are discarded. AWN takes these to the world, she said. “I get to play whatever I want. There are no restrictions” added Thushara, the vocalist of Karmic Sulphur and the host of the Trip Side.
The idea behind AWN is to promote Sri Lankan rock and heavy metal music both locally and internationally and to bring music from the global arena to the Sri Lankan community, said Ravindu. Many upcoming international bands like Forever in Turmoil from the US, Sunset Riot from Australia and Winter Hordes from Israel have partnered with us to promote their music on AWN, he added. “We need AWN to take our stuff to the world” said Sidath of the band Infernal. The people behind AWN are professional and dedicated, and they took “the initiative of fostering heavy metal” in Sri Lanka, said Sohan, the vocalist of Fallen Grace.
Ravindu explained that a problem faced by many young local bands is that they do not have access to proper equipment and technology in Sri Lankan studios and consequently their “garage recordings” are not of radio quality. AWN hopes to create a studio equipped to record rock and heavy metal music for Sri Lankan bands in future, he added.
After more than a year of test runs, AWN organised Maelstrom, a “surreal” night of musical mayhem, held recently on August 25 at the Women’s International Hall, to mark the official launch of AWN Radio. Drawing a crowd of about 400 people, AWN ‘unleashed its full capacity’ bringing six diverse bands onto one stage, “rekindling old memories”, for an unparalleled experience. Infernal, Forsaken, Karmic Sulphur, Tantrum, Fallen Grace and Stigmata combined their musical prowess and idiosyncratic stage presence to create an eclectic explosion of sight and sound.
We want to bring “the whole scene together”, said Keshan. Heavy metal in Sri Lanka is growing and its fan base ever expanding added Ravindu. They both agree that the response from local bands and fans has simply been “great”.
Keshan revealed their plans to organise black metal gigs in Gampaha and Kandy and international concerts in the near future. We are also looking at introducing international radio hosts from Dubai and the US, he added.
Next year, we plan on “hitting the waves” to broadcast AWN as a real radio station and get sponsors on board, said Ravindu. AWN Radio can be contacted through their Facebook pages for more details. |
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