Malaysian musical indie band FAZZ recently released their first album ever, called “Passage”.
Making their debut in 2012, the band is well known within the local music scene, thanks to their exciting live performances as well as their unique pattern of undefined music that’s not limited to a specific genre.
The band currently consists of Raja Farouk (Double bass), Grace Cho (Keyboards), Jone Yeoh (Drums), Jason Lim (Trombone), Ad Wafri (Trumpet) and Yon Lynn (Lead vocalist).
They have a diverse style of music. It mixes elements ranging from melange of cabaret, vaudeville, rock and roll and even jazz but although there are so many things stirred together, instead of creating chaos it turns out to be a chemistry of beautiful muse.
Each member stands out on his or her own but not in a way where they were competing for the centre stage, it’s more towards how the light that shines from each of them comes together into creating something brighter.
Their new album, “Passage”, talks about their journey until this point in their career. It shares their origin, their hardships and the decisions they have made, which all brought them to the present day.
TheHive.Asia was given the opportunity to sit down for an interview with the band during the album launch recently and here’s what they have to say:
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| Check out their first ever album, “Passage”. |
TheHive.Asia: With this being your first album as a band, when did you think you guys were ready for it?
Farouk: For me, it was the reaction from the audience. Their smile, their happiness, we translate their emotions on stage. At that point, I felt that what we were doing could be shared to the world, which brings us here today.
Why have you chosen “Alice in Wonderland” as a theme?
Farouq: It’s a reference to one of the first single in it, it’s created by Lynn and I call it, “Cheshire Cat”. The song is about how chaotic someone can be in their mind representing what it would be like in “Alice in Wonderland”. I think it’s just being high with LSD. The MV’s coming this 20 April. Our costume design was by Mina Watanabe.
It’s a thing where we have a theme of costume for each performance for the people to see.
Lynn: That’s right, we had the Kebaya look, the traditional look, the colourful look, and we always look for different ways into telling our stories about ourselves as well as the songs we write. We take it very seriously when it comes to picking what to wear for our upcoming concerts.
How well do you think your album will do in terms of competing in the international market?
Lynn: We’ve actually never had a specific goal to achieve. We’re more focused towards getting our music out, reaching to as many people as possible and inviting whoever enjoys it on board regardless of where they come from. One thing we realised when we were performing in Japan is that the vibe we were able to create for the audience to groove to. Although some of them don’t understand what we’re singing because of language barriers but they still dance to it.
I believe that it’s the music which binds all of us together. So our goal isn’t really towards getting huge or famous but rather it’s to reach out as far as we can, in search of anyone who enjoys watching and listening to us.
Grace: It’s not too much about the competition; it feels more like how we’re finally a part of the community, part of the artists we have been listening to. We were finally able to take a step towards that direction.
Farouq: There’s currently a lot of music going around, mainly pop. But we thought of showing an alternative take on what pop might be. This is what we’re trying to translate when we perform. Not to be competing with what’s there but more towards, “Hey, I know that sounds nice, but what about this?”
With your unique style of music, how do you think the audience will take it?
Farouq: Previously I wasn’t even thinking of hitting it mainstream. You don’t even hear us on the radio. But now I believe that it’s about time things should change and maybe that’s why we started this. We’re not making a revolution or anything we’re just playing music and sharing it to people that care. Fortunately we’ve met a lot of people that like our music and we still wish to spread our gospel everywhere else.
Grace: Of course, we can’t force people into liking our music, knowing our music isn’t the kind for everybody. They’re still open to their own opinion of our music but despite of that, what we do on stage, we do our very best.
How would you describe your genre of music?
Farouq: To be honest, we have no idea (laughs). We really don’t know what to call it. Although the news categorised us as pop rock band, we don’t think we are.
Lynn: It’s very hard to simply describe it, when people ask us what sort of music we play we’re left speechless. You have to come watch us to understand what sort of music we play. It’s not defined by a genre but it’s something that we offer, it’s an experience we want you to join in.
Grace: It’s difficult to compress everything into one word; it has to come with a whole description of what we do.
Farouq: It’s not even a gimmick, it’s just that we have no idea what we do and honestly. It’s something like mixing food together, there are some combination where it straight out doesn’t sound nice but yet it tastes amazing like mint chocolate. It sounds weird but it’s actually one of the bestselling ice cream right now, that’s basically the same thing in our case. We have no idea what it is, no name to call it, but we enjoy it and people enjoy it too and we ended up not giving it a name.