Brett Robinson: Serious Biz with the Man

By Alif Omar Mahfix  •  14 Feb 2012 in Interview

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You plan to merge all these different genres in one venue, what kind of demographic are you looking at?
I think if we take an example from our Australian show, the Future Music Festivals we have now, we have two main stages, with some of the world’s biggest bands and DJs. The most popular, the most commercial, the most radio-friendly, I suppose. But beyond that we’ve got a techno tent with things like Aphex Twin, Die Antwoord, Jamie Jones and a techno following. We’ve got a record stage with James Murphey and Hercules and Love Affair, Holy Ghost! and a whole heap of disco and electro type artists. We’ve got a Paul van Dyk stage, where he’s presenting his evolution stage show for the all trance fans. So really what we’re doing is we’re getting the best of every scene and putting them all together.

No matter what musical genre or style you’re into, there’s place for you at the festival. You can spend your entire day at the one stage if you like, because they’ll be six or seven artists on that bill that are the biggest artists in your world and you can spend the whole day there with your friends. With a big group of friends and the big group of friends has a diverse taste, each of you get to pick one act to watch and you might get to start to understand what your friends like about one artist and what they don’t like about the other, and it ends up being quite an experience for the whole group. In a nutshell, we are trying to offer a really large variety of music styles, and have a diverse festival.

Where do you hope the festival will go after Asia?
I think that’s enough for us for now. We’ve got a very, very strong presence in Australia, and I think that that one extra show on the way out and we looked at the idea that it could be a show exclusive to Asia. And instead of trying to do multiple locations, I think we want to just send the biggest lineup we possibly can to one location and to see people travel. There are some pretty inspiring festivals in your region like ZoukOut and like Fuji Rock Festival and Summersonic, but you see, with those festivals, a lot of people will travel from other cities in the region to those particular events because they’re high quality and they know they’re going to enjoy themselves. I think that’s really the focus for us, to make sure that we set up the one festival that is produced very, very well and build the reputation of being an event that you would want to spend great time at, and travel to and enjoy a weekend away.

What’s with the topless Troll Doll-like female figure?
Uh, what was that, sorry?

Is it a gnome? You know… the troll with 3 tits?
Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re saying there, can you repeat that?

You know your icon which is a…
Ah yeah, the gnome.

Why the gnome?
I don’t know actually. I’m not sure why we ended up with the gnome and the pink flamingo, it’s one of those things that when we first created the artwork our graphic designer included in there just as a bit of a laugh and a bit of a joke, and it kind of stuck. And we put it in one particular advertisement and everybody really liked it and thought it was quite a unique little icon and for some reason the little gnome has become our mascot and our trademark still to this day we can’t figure out why it’s become that, but we’ve grown to love it.

The Asian edition of FMF will see both Asian and Western artists, do you think in the future you’d consider bringing some of our Asian artists over to Australia to perform at your festival?
Yeah of course, of course, that’s one of the most exciting things for us is to be able to have the opportunity to come over and see a lot of those. Who are the big emergent artists in Asia? Part of the big discussions we’ve been having with our partners in KL is who we are programming on the festival regionally. It’s an exciting thing to understand the big acts in a different region and to make sure that we understand who they are. So I think when we get to the festival itself it’s going to be an exciting thing to see the performers, to see what they do and to see how the crowd react to their performances and definitely I think that the closer that we can come to working together and to integrating together, the better the exchange of artists between Australia and Asia and vice versa. I know that a lot of Australian acts are very excited about the fact that we’re doing Future Music Festival in Asia so that they get the opportunity to play to an Asian audience and I think vice versa, all the big ones that are really working well for us in Asia, that we see have a huge following and great talent we would love to put them in Australia

Last question, what do you ultimately hope to achieve with the coming of FMF in Asia?
The ultimate goal is to establish a very successful festival that’s highly regarded and respected by everyone in Asia and is something that they cherish and look forward to every year. I think that’s the most important thing for us is to try producing a festival that everyone loves and respects and that they feel is something that they can’t miss every year it comes up.

We already feel that way!

Brett Robinson is the director of Future Entertainment. Find more of their events here.