If you’re not racing to purchase your Future Music Festival Asia 2013 (FMFA 2013) tickets yet, this one will get you on your feet. Or at least get your fingers a-clickin’! A few weeks ago, we attended the FMFA 2013 press conference held at Fresca Mexican Kitchen, The Gardens Mall in Kuala Lumpur. After the initial announcements, we caught up with someone who works closely with world #1 DJ, Armin van Buuren (lucky us!) and picked his thoughts on A State of Trance 600 (ASOT 600) which will be happening on day one of FMFA 2013.
Meet Dennis de Bruin, the Brand Director of Alda Events. He shares with us the process in which they went through prior to picking Kuala Lumpur as one of the venue choices for Armin’s epic A State of Trace 600th episode aka ASOT 600 aka “The Expedition“.
Iqbal Ameer (Director of Livescape Asia). Jason Ayoubi (Director of Future Entertainment Australia), & Dennis de Bruin (Brand Director of Alda Events)
Be prepared to be amazed:
Hi, Dennis! Welcome to Kuala Lumpur. Is this your first time here?
“Actually, I’ve been here on holiday a couple of years ago. I love Kuala Lumpur.”
How excited are you about bringing ASOT 600 aka “The Expedition” here with Armin van Buuren?
“Really excited! On a scale of one to ten, I would say a nine. We’ve been wanting to do Asia for a long time but previously, there were no opportunities. We needed a promoter who was reliable, who’d be able to really do it, and who’d be able to take on the production. We need very stable Internet lines because 20 million people will be listening in from around the world and ASOT 600 will have live streaming so..there were a lot of things that we needed to know before we could bring ASOT to Asia. These guys, Future Entertainment, are people we’ve worked with before, they’re good production managers, and they’re really professional so we’ve decided to go along and do the show in Malaysia. We’re really happy!”
We understand that you work very closely with Armin. What were some of the things that the team took into consideration before deciding on Kuala Lumpur as one of the ASOT 600 venues?
“Armin mentioned on his radio show months back that people were e-mailing him asking him to go to that country, or come to this country, go here, go there..so he thought, okay, if you really want ASOT in your country then start campaigning and let us know. From that moment on, fans from around the world started campaigning on Twitter and Facebook. We even received physical pitches, you know? 40-paged books containing reasons why we should go to their city, with information and pictures and even small speeches from some kind of minister! Awesome! And people were pushing their numbers, thinking that if there were 40,000 people supporting the campaign, that Armin would definitely go there. But we needed a promoter who could do the production and if they don’t have what we need, we can’t go there. For Asia, Malaysia was very high on the list. We received offers from all kinds of promoters from this country so we decided we had to do something here. Luckily, we talked to Future Entertainment and Livescape Asia and..we’re here now! We’re gonna do it!”
A State of Trance 550 (ASOT 550) aka “The Invasion” was massive and the one held in Den Bosch had multiple stages, including a Pink Stage. Will that be translated to “The Expedition” in Kuala Lumpur?
“What we do is, we would usually have one stage in every country. After going around the world, we go back to Holland, that’s the end and the last show. That’s where we’ll have a combination of everything. That show is usually so big that it’s for the whole of Europe. What happens is that people from England, Germany, France, Belgium..they all come to Holland for the big show. Last year, indeed, we had a Pink Stage – for female singers and female DJs. Because what ASOT is all about is new talents, giving news DJs opportunities and a platform to perform or to show their work. Armin is also always fighting for more female DJs/producers in the Top 100 so it makes sense to have a Pink Stage. ‘The Expedition in Kuala Lumpur, well, you can expect to see one big main stage with a huge technical production that we have developed, and some great names. It’ll be special because we’ll be here and the show will be broadcast live.”
Speaking of great names, and we know that you can’t reveal the names slated to perform at ASOT 600 KL yet but how many names exactly are we looking at?
“Five or six. They’ll all perform for about an hour or an hour and fifteen minutes each, then Armin will perform a little bit longer. He will also present the show from his radio studio, invites all the artistes, have little chit chats and discuss the night. It’s going to be amazing.”
Oh my, somebody hold us down because we can’t wait for March to come! Thank you so much, Dennis for speaking to us. We’ll definitely see you again in 2013 – with Armin van Buuren too, of course.
Also, don’t forget to purchase your tickets! Hit up FMFA’s website or their Facebook page. Walk-in purchase available at all Rock Corner, Victoria Music, and TicketPro outlets.