ANGEL DUST

Angels of progressive rock ‘Angel Dust’, a Bangalore band, has been winning awards by the bushel. Michael Patrao tunes into their music.

They are not angels in disguise. Their music is good enough to make the dust fly of your designer jeans. The band an allusion is ‘Angel Dust’, who in six years have become veterans of the rock music scene in Bangalore.

‘Angel Dust’ is another name for a drug called PCP (phencyclidine), a hallucinogen similar to LSD. But the band has nothing to do with the such stuff. “Our name has nothing to do with the drug, it represents both planes of existence, heavenly and earthly”, they say.

Formed in early 1996 the five-member band is led by the energetic Christopher ‘Chris’ Avinash, an MBA, who has taken a sabattical from work to concentrate on the band. Chris worked as a brand executive for BPL and decided that he must build up the brand of his band.

Chris, besides acting as the frontman for the band, is the lead guitarist and vocalist and also composes and arranges songs. He has done ad jingles for Blazer Zone, Hyundai and Museum Inn, heard on Radio City.

Other members of the band are Ryan Colaco (drums), Hubert D’Mello (rhythm), Akshay Shekar (bass), Ricky Kej (keyboards). Each member of the band has honed his skills by playing for different bands. Ryan is also a drummer for ‘Kryptos’-- a metal band, Hubert plays for Glorious Choir, Ricky is with a techno rave band called ‘Raveolution’, Akshay Shekar plays for Gerard Machado Network, a jazz band and Chris Avinash plays for ‘Document Done.’

 In their formative years they played heavy metal, but soon evolved into what they call “progressive rock”. The songs are mostly written by Chris. Their original songs focus on issues like child labour, politics. They are not averse to doing covers and play Rush, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Pink Floyd and Deep Purple among others.

Their winning performances include Rocktaves at BITS Pilani in 1999, at the Indian Institute of Science festival -- Vibrock -- where they’ve won twice, the UVCE fest (twice), the Rotary South India contest, National Law School’s Strawberry Fields 1999, ‘Mood Indigo’ 2000 at IIT, Powai. They have opened for bands like Parikrama and Moksha.

Their song ‘Technical Specification’ was adjudged as ‘Best original song’. They’ve bagged the ‘Best drummer’ and ‘Best overall band’ awards when they played at BITS ilani contesting with 29 other bands for the top five slots. ‘Technical specification’ was also rated as the ‘Best original composition of the season’. It is a song about unrequitted love and the discovery of hate. It is a slow song with heavy Carnatic elements.

‘Weave’ is a fantasy song, a fairy tale with a princess in it; ‘Paradigm Shift’ is a song about changes in a relationship. ‘Lost’ is a personal song about making choices and ‘Running Horse’ is a Carnatic-based instrumental. (Deccan Herald)