A legendary figure in the nightlife scene in Singapore, DJ and now Festival Founder, Andrew T, sits with us to talk about his thoughts on why his newest festival is going to be something you don't want to miss.
ADM: How did you come up with Legacy and why the name "Legacy"?
AT: Of course from being a DJ I've always wanted to progress past that. Since The Butter Factory shut down in 2015, I started AOS collective and have done a lot of smaller events with big international acts like Major Lazer and booking them for clubs and our own private parties. The end goal was always to do a large scale festival.
Over the years there's been a lot of other festivals growing like ZoukOut and Ultra Music Festival, but we wanted to create a brand that was our own and of course eventually build it big at home and bring it overseas.
Basically the name "Legacy" is because we want to start something new that's not just our own and local but also something that can stand with the other international festivals.
ADM: With all the issues that has plagued local festivals such as Ultra Music Festival and more recently the attendance fatigue that has caused a hiatus for ZoukOut, do you think the same problems will affect "Legacy" or do you have something in mind on how to address these issues?
AT: Having been in the industry for a while, of course there are a lot of factors that we see that cause these issues. There's price points and inflation of rates for headlining DJs to consider when organising festivals and also the risks of clashing with other festivals but it's a risk we're willing to take.
We've been lucky to build a close relationship with the management and the DJs, and thus we've been able to make the festival more affordable for the audience. With these things in mind, it's all a matter of working our Profit And Loss properly where we won't overspend on things that aren't needed. We aim to spend on things with quality, with that said a lot of the times when festivals face the issue with funding over the course of running for a number of years, a lot of things that weren't planned would happen and because of the urgency of the situation the cost would rise exponentially, it all adds up.
Despite that we learn about what we should and should not spend on, and given enough time and planning we are sure that we can manage the cost properly. Also with our experience we're sure about what's the comfort zone for audiences to spend at a festival.
We're aware of how ticket prices have increased over the years despite the perceived drop in the quality of the programming. We aim to have a strong line-up in our first festival filled with strong local support while keeping the price affordable for everybody. That point alone is something we believe will help with encouraging people to attend without having to burn a hole in their pockets.
Hopefully it'll build from there and if the other acts see what we're trying to do and lend their support, we'll definitely be able to keep ticket prices affordable for the foreseeable future.
Besides that we're trying to get as much local support as we can for all parts of the festival. Everything from the stage design to the marketing, it's all heavily local.
In that sense we're trying to keep everything affordable and drum up more local support. It's heartening that since we've launched this that everyone has been super supportive of what we're doing by wanting to be involved in it and that helps in terms of the overall planning and setup. There's a lot of fresh ideas coming in on how to make it more appealing to everyone.
One of the ways we aim to do that is by bringing in acts that haven't been here before or haven't been here for a while. We want the music of the festival to have more variety while maintaining the flow of the music so that everyone has a more enjoyable experience.
ADM: Does that mean that Legacy will have multiple stages?
AT: We're going to have 2 Stages. The first will be your traditional main stage while the other will be a little more interesting. We're going to be doing something with Red Bull 3Styles as well as working with the more underground House and Techno DJs.
ADM: What about Bass music?
AT: We're talking right now with a lot of the people in the region but our main focus right now is ensuring that we've locked down all our headliners. We're 99% done with all that and once that's totally done we're going to be reaching out to get our local and regional support acts.
That said, Bass is definitely one of the larger genres that has been growing in Asia. It's not a matter of if we're going to have Bass acts but more so a matter of when and where should we place them in the festival.
We definitely have plans to include Bass acts in the lineup, we're even considering a couple of Hardstyle DJs. At the end of the day it's how we plan for the festival to flow.
Our main aim is to be able to make the festival as enjoyable to as many people as we can.
ADM: Do you have anything you'd like to say to the people who are planning to attend Legacy?
AT: We hope you have an excellent experience musically, we're not here to burn a hole in your pockets. We want you to have a good time and hope you have an open mind, it's our first one. Just give us two days of your time and hopefully what we have planned will be something you'll remember.
Early Bird tickets are priced at S$90 (1-day pass) and S$150 (2-day pass) for Early Bird; S$130 (1-day pass) and S$180 (2-day pass) for Advance Sales; and S$200 at the door; and will be available at http://www.gogotix.sg
Tickets for Legacy go on sale tomorrow.