Future Music Festival Asia 2013: Smack My Piñata Up!

By Alif Omar Mahfix  •  in Features
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Explosión del Pasado: Recapping FMFA12
JUICE remembers the first time we heard from the rumour mill about the arrival of Future Music Festival to Malaysia – a large scale festival encompassing international, regional, and local acts? Psh, we said. Well we had to eat our words and shoes, and saw pigs flew too, because sh*t was cray. With a turnout of over 20,000 revellers – not just locals mind you, we had tourists from all over beyond just Asia – and a lineup consisting of varied genres, FMFA turned out to be the sort of music festivals you only had read about prior. And now it’s an annual experience.

The first FMFA displayed the festival’s acumen for catering to a wide range of musical palates – EDM (Cosmic Gate, Goldfish & Blink, Chase & Status, The Chemical Brothers), bands (The Wombats, Kyoto Protocol, Hercules & the Love Affair), rap (Joe Flizzow, Flo Rida), and genre-defying acts (d’n’b rock band Pendulum), just to name a few. All cleverly separated by four stages – Flamingo, Las Venus, Future and Gnome – catering to the different tastes of their audiences.

Not to be outdone by their Australian counterpart, the festival had a multitude of installations; food trucks & stalls (we particularly dug the sushi truck), Ferris wheel, reverse bungee, Red Bull booth, VIP station, and more. Gotta be honest with you guys, we spent as much time on the Ferris wheel and reverse bungee as we did watching the performances.

And what a bunch of performances they were! Timmy Trumpet and The Stafford Brothers started the fest with an epic combo of DJing and live trumpet playing – jolting the audience to live. Then we had Flo Rida, whom we were no fan of, but still we gotta admit the pop-electro rapper lived up to what was expected of him; a crowd-pleasing act. Miss Connie Mitchel of Sydney’s Sneaky Sound System was up next at the Las Venus stage, wearing a Gaga-esque getup in the form of a golden-leafed costume that got us going “lolwut?” Tinie Tempah, the British B.o.B, proved to be just as much of a crowd-pleasing act as Flo Rida was despite the lack of obnoxious ‘80s samples. It helped that the man was a master at interacting with the crowd.

The Chemical Brothers might have played a disappointing DJ set (they are 100 times better live), but Oz d’n’b band Pendulum kicked mojo a$s. Imagine a set that went from metal to dubstep without sounding too bro or corny. While Cosmic Gate was giving EDM fans a time of their life, The Wombats showed exactly what FMFA was about when they played single ‘Techno Fan’ – the blurring of genre loyalty on a grand scale.

Most impressive was the consistency of the crowd, it took time for them to trickle in during the day but by peak hours the main stages were never empty. There was a palpable joy on everyone’s face, as if it was their first true music fest experience. We wager it was for most.

As good as it was a first time, FMFA13 could only be better. After all, the pains of birth has now past, there’s only growing left to do.

For event photos, click here.