That's where I distinguish awareness and consciousness. It's sort of semantic and if you wanted to use the words differently, who'se to argue, but here's the way I use them. Awareness is that raw experience of anything of any kind or no kind existing at all. It is mysterious. We can't say anything about it other than it's there.
Consciousness begins with perception.
We are conscious of things. We can be aware without thinginess having anything to do with it. Perception of things is a program of the brain computer. Not very mysterious at all. Since people usually talk about consciousness as that which perceives things, I feel a need to distinguish it from awareness because the one is mysterious and the other is, imho, not.