German DJs Dom Felsmann and Frank Ellrich, who together are known as Kairo Kingdom, were a long way from home at the Vans Warped Tour in Holmdel, N.J. on Sunday.
The DJs hail from Frankfurt, Germany and had rarely played in the United States together before Warped Tour. Furthermore, their EDM style was a far cry from the guitar-and-drum-heavy bands that make up the majority of the tour's roster.
The two took the time to give an interview to MStars during Sunday's festivities and talked about their backgrounds, the crowd reaction and more.
MStars: How did you two get together and how did you wind up here today?
Felsmann: We both had solo careers as DJs back in the early 2000s and then we met up because we made the same kind of music before and played a couple of gigs all over the world together. At one point, we just said, 'Hey, let's make music together.' And that was back in 2012.
We make a fusion of bass music and we mix it up with hip-hop and then rock and anything that sounds funny and good. We had our first single out in March 2012 and now we're here and it's crazy.
You definitely have a different style than many of the other bands that are here.
Felsmann: Completely different, yeah.
Have you gotten a reaction from the crowd because of that?
Ellrich: We are really, positively surprised about the crowd reaction. I think the common thing is the energy. Bass music has this crossover thing, like Dom already said, with influences from rock, hip-hop, whatever. And with the EDM energy it works perfectly here.
Ellrich: The crowd is different though. They want to be entertained a lot more than the club crowd. We're used to playing clubs and festivals that are purely EDM and those kids are different. They love it still. We have the crowd going any time and it's surprising. We didn't expect that at all.
You guys are a long way from home. Have you done a lot of tours in the States?
Ellrich: As Kairo Kingdom, (we had) a first tour, one solo gig in Florida, Panama City before. But that's pretty much the first tour together.
Are you working on any new material?
Felsmann: For now, it's summer anyway and in electronic dance music there's kind of a summer hold. Nobody releases stuff. So we have a lot of releases lined up that will be coming out probably around August, September, I'd say, on all kinds of levels. So there's a lot of stuff coming, actually.
Ellrich: We planned, to be honest, to make a little bit of music during the tour. We have probably 50 days going across the states, and have 40 gigs, so there's not much time left really to do it.
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