Turning up the love

FANS OF FAR EAST Movement who’ve been waiting impatiently for another dose of the kind of high energy sounds the foursome serves up should make sure they have tickets for Sonic Bang next Saturday, where the lads will be plays club hits and catchy dancefloor fillers.
The LA-based quartet – Kev Nish, Prohgress, J-Splif and DJ Virma – had the crowd dancing and grooving with their breakthrough hit “Round Round”, which was first featured in “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”.
They then went on to rock music charts with their major label debut CD “Free Wired” that spawned such hits as “Rocketeer” featuring Ryan Tedder, “She Owns the Night” featuring Mohombi and “Fighting for Air”.
Their ground breaking hit, “Like a G6” featuring vocalist Dev and indie hip-hop duo the Cataracs, hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart and iTunes, making them the first Asian-American group to land a chart-topper on this leading US chart.
Last year, the group came back with the new album, “Dirty Bass”, featuring even more sensational hits including “Live My Life” with Justin Bieber and “Turn Up the Love” with Cover Drive.
Far East Movement made their Bangkok debut gig in 2011 at CDC, and due to popular demand, returned for an encore last year at Route 66 on RCA.
Kev Nish chatted with us about their upcoming Bangkok gig.

What are you up to now?
Currently we’re on the Movementality Europe tour and working hard on our next album on the road. We’ve been spending most of the year touring around the US, Asia, Europe and Australia. We see our beds at home only a few times |a year.
How has 2013 treated you so far? Any interesting projects coming up?
2013 has been amazing. We started the year by our first number one record in the UK and it’s been non stop ever since. We recently dropped a mixtape with some hard mixes and a few new tracks from the new album we’re starting and released a music video to one of the songs called “The Illest” which is just starting to get radio play in the US. We’re grateful for all the blessings!

You'll be in Bangkok soon for Sonic Bang festival. How do you feel?
We are extremely excited to come back to Bangkok to perform. It’s one of our favourite cities to visit and there’s always so much love and energy from the people. We always wish we could stay a few days longer than planned.

What do like you most about our capital?
Well, it’s a tie between beautiful girls and great food! Thai food in Los Angeles is not as good as in Bangkok. Gotta add we love the architecture, too. But on the hot summer days, I wish I had enough money to buy a huge balloon bubble I could put over Bangkok and pump cool air conditioning over the whole city.

Do you prefer performing as part of a festival or in your own show?
There are pluses to both contexts. But I prefer the freedom of our own gigs to experiment and play the songs only the fans might know and make subtle changes that they might like. However, we love massive audiences and the chance to play for people that might have not heard of Far East Movement.

What’s your most memorable gig so far?
Hopefully it will be Sonic Bang! But for now Springroove in Japan and Wireless Festival in the UK are pretty awesome. We change our set in almost every city. Each set caters to the crowd and keeps us on our toes.

How do you unwind during the tour?
We’ll explore the cities when we have time, walk around and take pictures of street art and different cultures. We don’t just like coming to perform; we like learning about the people that represent us.

What do you plan to do while in Bangkok besides the show?
We are going to shoot some episodes for a new web series if there’s time; Bangkok would be a great backdrop. Then we’ll just chill with our homies DJ Ono and the Bangkok Invaders and grab some legit Thai food and record a few songs in our hotel room.

What do you have in store for us this time around?
We plan to drop some new music and we have a new set for Thailand. It will be a mash up of 3 MCs and a DJ and our transition to a band as well. I can’t wait to have some wild times with y’all again!


Far East Movement is performing as part of Sonic Bang music festival on Saturday August 24 at Muang Thong Thani.
Tickets at Bt4,000 and Bt5,000 are available from Thai Ticket Major outlets. Call (02) 262 3456; www.ThaiTicketMajor.com