*EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW* UrbanAsian Catches up with A-Slam!

A-Slam music is a Vancouver hip-hop artist and production team. Men of many talents, from DJing, producing, recording, mixing, mastering and performing, they can do it all! We caught up with DJ E.V of A-Slam to find out what they’re up to and what they’re bringing to the desiFEST stage in a few days!

Check out the full interview below.

If you were to describe your music or sound in one word, what would it be?

Electro Bhangra – 2 words 😉

What’s your motivation or inspires you to make music? Any influences you have?

Growing up in co-op housing in East Vancouver is what motivated me to get into music; to come from that neighborhood and turn it into something positive. My mom has also been a big inspiration. She came to Canada with nothing, escaped a Civil War in Africa, and raised 2 boys on her own. She’s something special. Now that I’ve been touring, I have been pulling a lot of ideas from my travels, most recently while touring in India. So a lot from life experience and of course by what other trends in the industry are.

Have any of you been musically trained or where did this passion come from?

I’ve been playing music right from elementary school and have learned as much as I could along the way. I haven’t taken classical or formal training but I’m considering it. I do have a good grasp of music theory from my own self learning. The passion for music came from listening to music first. Once I started playing it, it just felt right so I never stopped. Vocals were a natural progression because I wanted to tell stories at the same time.

You’re going to be performing at Canada’s largest South Asian Event, desiFEST, how excited are you about that and what are you looking forward to? What will you bring to the stage?

I love desiFEST. They’ve really done something special. They were the first people to bring A-SLAM into Toronto as well. This year I’m looking forward to doing a full video performance. We’ve had a lot of music video’s come out so integrating that into our performance. All our new songs are up tempo Electronic so we’ll be bringing that Hip-Hop feel we’re known for but also introducing new Electro tracks.

Who is someone that you wish to collaborate with?

Kanye West, no explanation needed.

Do you prefer sitting in the studio writing music, or performing in front of a live audience?

Always performing in-front of an audience. When I’m in the studio working on all the timing and editing, what pulls me through is how I’m going to feel dropping the song in my DJ sets or performing it live.

What are you working on right now? Any new singles or albums coming up?

Our album is officially complete so now we’re working on the music videos. The next single will be coming out soon. We also have two songs on the Taz – Stereo Nation album that just released – Desi and You Know It. Taz will be on the A-SLAM album when it releases later this year. I’m also really excited about the City of Bhangra Festival in Vancouver. This is the first year I’ll be DJing with a drum group called Repercussion. Electro Beats accompanied by drums from all around the world, going to be amazing. So I’m working on that and desiFEST performances right now. I will make sure to link UrbanAsian with the video clips!

Thank you for taking time out to do this interview. Is there anything you would like to say to your fans and our UrbanAsian.com readers?

First, I’d like to say thank you for supporting our first single Back Down (Party Rock Remix). The crazy support of the track is what led to our first tour in India. If you still haven’t seen, it features our good friend and MMA champ Gary St Lion Mangat, who might be with us at DesiFest.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP21vJmVkko

Second, fans always ask how they can get new releases and where they can hear all our music. Very easy, first just hit our website and sign up for the newsletter. We send out one message once a month with new releases for free download. Then as always follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Or on our facebook page click bandpage / mixcloud and you’ll here all our stuff.
Now its time to #getdesiFIED!
Cheers DJ “E.V.” of A-SLAM