Illan Kaapan made their No Echo debut late last year, around the time they released their tasty demo. The Melbourne band is rooted in the Sri Lankan immigrant experience and the search for community far from home.
Over the past year, those themes have only become more central to what the band does.
With the release of their new EP, Undeniable, last month, Robert from Life.Lair.Regret.Records sat down with vocalist Asela to talk about discovering hardcore in Sri Lanka, building new connections in Australia, weaving Sri Lankan culture into the band's music, and the importance of creating inclusive, all-ages spaces.
Thanks for the insightful piece, Robert!
—Carlos
G’day, Asela. Appreciate your time. You sing in Ilan Kaapan. Before we talk about the band, I’d love to hear about hardcore for you: where that connection started, what drew you to it in Sri Lanka, and how you found community in Australia.
Thanks for having me, Rob. Stoked to be here and grateful to even be asked. No Echo put me on to so much dope music over the years.
Man, it might be a pretty long answer because it's also a great way for me to talk about music in Sri Lanka as a whole. I think I had a pretty classic introduction to hardcore and heavy music when I saw Hatebreed's "Live for This" and Metallica's "One" music videos on the Sri Lankan rock hour on TV when I was like 10 years old.
Not long after, I got my cousin's old iPod Shuffle, and a family friend loaded it up with music. Among the very dope Matchbox Twenty, Michelle Branch, and Jackson Five tracks, he'd also had the good grace to put in Rebirth of Tragedy and some All That Remains tracks. Shoutout to that guy.
From there on, I ran LimeWire 24/7 and downloaded heaps of hardcore, metal, punk, and adjacent music. Lots of Trap Them, Suicide File, Rvivr, Have Heart, Solstice (US), etc. I even came across some Aus hardcore from different Blogspots. Shoutout to Shotpointblank. I was nerdy deep into punk/hardcore and all flavors of metal during my teens (and still am), so I could go on for pages [laughs].
Sri Lanka has a great music scene and so much talent. You have electronic, metal, hip-hop, and more in the contemporary space. But it's not easy to throw alternative shows because of demand, red tape, and the rising cost of living, which makes it hard to do things. Not to mention the genocide and war that made it nearly impossible for international artists to come down to Sri Lanka for many years.
One of the only big ones who came down during that time was the GOAT Bryan Adams in 2004! I was too young to go to that (it also sold out in a day; "Summer of '69" is Sri Lanka's unofficial national anthem), but the first show I ever went to was in 2009, when As I Lay Dying played an open-air show at Viharamahadevi Park, supported by Nervecell, Fallen Grace, Paranoid Earthling, and Whirlwind.
My friend's older brother took me (shoutout to Devin and Jevon). It started pouring rain during the last half of the show, and it's such a core memory. Wore a dope Lamb of God bootleg shirt from Majestic City (iykyk) to that show too.
After that, I went to metal shows. Bands like Stigmata, Fallen Grace, Sacrament, and so many more were making shit happen despite the odds. There was no hardcore scene in Sri Lanka, but shoutout to the d-beat band Dispute for flying the punk flag. If you're reading this and were a Sri Lankan core band that even did one practice, please hit me up! I wanna hear about you!
A couple years of fucking around after school, I moved to Australia when I was 20. I started going to shows of heaps of genres pretty fast, starting with The Menzingers at The Reverence. It was like Christmas, man. All these artists I'd only seen behind a computer screen for years, playing stages I could dive off? Wild.
It was an uphill battle fitting into Australia as a whole, and I'm sure much of that was my own insistence on staying closed off and feeling out of place, but things did get better over time, and I started making those connections.
I didn't go to as many shows as I did later, when I was more financially stable, but I'll always remember one of the most important shows that made me feel like part of the scene. I saw Heat at Lasties and was buying a shirt off Andy and mentioned that I'm from Sri Lanka while making conversation. I'd already been here for a while, but Andy started their set with, "Yo, I met a guy who just got here from Sri Lanka." Shoutout Andy.
Illan Kaapan is a relatively new band. Let’s run through its history and how it came together.
I knew Prince and George for a while. They'd both played in dope bands like Fuzzmeadows, Pulse, Vicious Cycle, Nervous Tension, Milou Moon, and more. I had some demos of the first four songs we put out. I was chatting to them about doing a hardcore band, and it ended up becoming an all-Lankan band because, hey, we had three Lankans. Why not make life extra hard and find a Lankan bass player and second guitarist too?
Luckily, I met Ko at a WeWork, and he made the mistake of telling me about his heritage in the same breath as telling me that he fucks with Speed [laughs]. Then, a week later, he was in the garage learning the tracks.
Githmi joined not long after our first show once she got back from traveling the world, and she's been the missing piece we needed. The dope trade we all worked out is that we'd also play in Nineteen Ninety Hate, an emo/grungegaze band where Prince is on vocals. So now you have two scene Lankan bands for the price of one.
This is mine and Ko's first band. Compared to the rest of the guys, I'm very much a personality hire.
I’ve loved being able to have a front-row seat to watching the band grow, and the two biggest takeaways I’ve had are how important community and inclusion are in what you do. Is that intentional or just a happy byproduct?
We were kinda joking around about it at first, hey. Like, an all-Sri Lankan hardcore band is a short-term novelty. But it seemed like people really gave a fuck, and for some reason they really connected with the space we were making at shows.
It wasn't always intentional, but I think it's the byproduct of being Sri Lankan and being an immigrant. Where I'm from, we don't get the luxury of disengaging from politics and the needs of your wider community. The way corruption, violence, and marginalization run through almost every level of the state means you have to be very lucky to have an individualist, fuck-the-world attitude.
Paired with being first- and second-gen immigrants, knowing what it's like to not have that immediate acceptance around you means we want others to feel like they get that sense of community at our shows.
I think that ties in with what hardcore and punk are to start with. We're only really just putting that sensibility at the forefront of what we do. It's been there since the start. Just look at how many dope hardcore fundraisers happen in this city and country every year!
We're all looking for some kind of connection at the end of the day, especially if you're in some kind of alternative culture. Even if you're acting like the hardest, most unbothered cunt in the room, it's with some hope of acceptance in mind.
I could spend my very miserable life being a miserable person, sharing that misery with everyone, but I'd rather something good come out of that, and maybe some kid at a show remembers it as the time they didn't feel as alone as they once were.
Continuing with those ideas, after you played the Dome show, the band cooked and put on a free dinner with the hardcore community. Truly a dope move. Tell me about the connection of culture in what you do and how important that is.
Man, we're Sri Lankan. Of course we're going to feed you! Everyone in that room, and the wider scene, has given us so much. It's the least we can do to make sure they leave with a full stomach where we can. Most of us also take cooking pretty seriously, having worked in restaurants and spice shops [laughs].
I think the Lankan fingerprints are all over the music. We use a lot of musical cues from cultural music, Lankan metal (shoutout "Andura" by Stigmata), and even R&B.
I grew up in a village and would hear thammattama drums constantly because I lived next door to a "sasthara karaya" (fortune teller) who also did exorcisms haha. Her crew would play the drums to draw out demons and shit, so those temple rhythms have been kinda burned into my memory and show up in some of the songs and structures.
But, like, we're not a massive global cultural force of a country by any means. It's just dope being able to share all this cool stuff — food, music, and mindset — with people here. We got kids screaming the words in our language back at us, and people even chase up the "Ahankara Nagare" sample from the intro. How sick.
Undeniable is the name of your new EP, but it also feels like a mission statement. Is that a correct read of the band and what you’re trying to do?
Yo, actually, great moment to give Ko his flowers here. He's easily the quickest member of IK and so damn funny. Back when we were just practicing, after every run of a song he'd say, "Guys, we're undeniable," and that stuck through to the EP release.
That being said, it's not Undeniable in the sense that the band is undeniable.
Lyrics are a big part of the band, with you entwining messages into your music. What are you hoping to convey with Undeniable?
To answer your last question as well, there's a fair bit of emotion that went into the record. We were all going through pretty rough times writing and recording it while playing all those shows. What kept us going was that people just seemed to be so stoked to see us.
The record is about the undeniable feeling of being part of something much bigger than yourself when you're in the shared space of hardcore and any kind of community. If you build something together, you could be undeniable, with "together" being the most important word there.
Your upcoming tour is entirely made up of all-ages shows, which is so different from most tours. Tell me about why you all worked to make that happen and what that was like.
Mate, it's actually all all-ages shows [laughs]. We don't quit, and neither do the bookers who see the value in doing this as much as we do.
All-ages shows are so important, man. I'm so stoked every time a kid comes and tells me, "Yo, I just did my first stage dive," or, "Yo, it's my first show." It's not easy with how difficult it is to keep AA venues alive sometimes, so we went into this band with the intention of getting to a place where we could play as many new AA venues as possible so that people can continue using them in the future and there's always an option for a booker out there.
Yeah, DIY stings financially up front and everything goes wrong on the day, but it's so worth it, man. I can probably count on one hand the number of 18+ shows we've done so far. I wish every show we did was an AA show and that more bands and bookers did the same.
We're getting on in years by comparison, and the least we can do is build a relationship and sort a spot with whatever sway we have so that someone else can book a show there after us. It's so sick seeing people already booking more shows at these venues, like The Chain at Boroondara Scouts and Gil Cerrone at the Dome, and I hope it keeps going forever.
And from a personal standpoint, it's something I just didn't have growing up in Sri Lanka and always sought out. I mentioned that shows aren't super consistently happening back home, and all-ages shows even less so. It's dope being able to do that here for anyone else who might need it.
I also wanna take a moment to shout out some dope Naarm bookers who don't always get the spotlight:
Youth of Tomorrow
Under the Almonds
Crowdkill Syndicate
Cheesy Smile
Moshparty
And countless more.
Finishing up, what do you hope people take away from Illan Kaapan, and what does the name mean?
I hope that when people come to a show, they leave with a few more homies than they walked in with. I hope that people want to contribute their effort to something outside the four walls of the venue. I hope that people, especially men, wanna steer clear of the try-hard shit and stand for something even if your brotherhood crashes out over it.
I hope people buy a T-shirt so we can buy a yacht — pay the bond on the next AA space. Most importantly, I hope everyone treats the kid who's at their first show with open arms and respect.
Illan Kaapan is a slang term never to be used in polite company. It literally translates to "if you're asking for it, then you can eat it." Essentially, it means fuck around and find out.
Thanks so much, man. Shoutout the Lair and Reason and Rage, and shoutout everyone who stuck around.
***
Undeniable is available now on vinyl (Reason and Rage Records) and CD (Life.Lair.Regret.Records).
Illan Kaapan on social media: Instagram
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