Get an inside look at Black Tiger Sex Machine’s debut at Together Festival Thailand 2025 and their unique show inspiration.

We caught up with Black Tiger Sex Machine at Together Festival Thailand to talk about bringing their new manga-inspired show to Asia, how they balance storytelling and spontaneity in their sets, and why Thailand has become one of their favorite stops on tour.

This is your first time playing at Together Festival, which leads me into my first question. You’re kind of bringing this whole new show to the festival, how do you think the fans are going to react?

Well, hopefully they’re going to like it. We’re super happy to play this show. We started doing this tour earlier this year in the US and it’s been going super well, so we’re really excited to bring it to Asia. We know there are a lot of fans of Anime in Asia and our show is based on a Manga that we wrote that’s going to be coming out later this year. So a lot of the visuals the fans will see later tonight, they’re depicting the storyline of the lore of BTSM so we hope people will enjoy it. 

Since you guys talked about Manga, I want to ask about the Omen project. You kind of incorporated that into your music and visuals, so how do you balance telling the narrative of the story and spontaneity in your set? 

That’s a good question. Since we play live, the structure of the show, we basically plan ahead what we’re going to be playing with some things varying from show to show. What we do in terms of balancing out the storyline and what we’re trying to build along with the music is to limit some of the cinematics at intervals so one in the beginning, one in the middle and one in the end so that way there is space for us to play around and have fun so it doesn’t feel like a story but rather it’s a mix of that. Also, with the styles of music we play, we try to go from different bpms so it’s never one thing with us. We’re trying to give the best show possible so they’re not bored. 

So you talked about playing at EDC which leads me into my next question, so festival season has had you playing many events, how do you change your sets depending on each festival? Is there anything you change or tweak a bit?

We’re always kind of tweaking from set to set and every few months we’d do a big reset. We think that for us, we try to bring the same energy whether we’re playing in a smaller club or indoor festival. We’re trying to put on the best show possible. Sometimes there’s more pyro or lasers, but ultimately, we’re just trying to bring the maximum energy every time. The thing that changes the most however is the set times, so like when we played Ultra Argentina this year which was a set time in the sun, the lighting is not as visible so we have to adapt. At some events we won’t have lasers so we’d have to adapt the lighting to create more energy where there were lasers. We see it as kind of a conversation between the production and the fans, so we’re using it to the maximum potential. 

So you’ve played here multiple times in Thailand, the country has a reputation of going all out in EDM events, does this mean you prepare differently for an audience here compared to say North America or any other part of the world?

Actually no because on our end, we really believe in the kind of story we’re trying to tell. So the show itself has a lot of energy, and over the years we’ve seen fans from for example Thailand discover a little more of what dubstep represents. It’s very well known in North America but it’s becoming more popular here in Thailand and as time goes by, like tonight we met fans that were talking about opening the pit, it’s showing how dubstep is becoming popular which means we don’t change from country to country. The only time we change is for after parties, so we’d go more into drum and bass, techno and all that stuff. Those venues give us closer connection with the fans there. 

If you could relive one moment from the past year of touring, not to change it but to experience it again, which moment would it be and why?

We did two nights in Seattle in 2024 at a venue called Wamu and sold it out 2 nights in a row. It was like 18,000 people for our own headline shows and it was a massive accomplishment for us. We think about those shows regularly, and we even streamed a livestream of the first night of the show. It kind of made us connect with people more. Those shows were definitely big for us, and you dont even know if you’re going to get to relive something like that again. We were told that when we played those shows in Seattle, we sold more tickets than Pearl Jam so it’s something that really doesn’t happen that often. For us, we felt like soaking it in cause we don’t know if something like that is going to happen again.