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Guestlist recommends: Bastille
Tuesday 29th January 2013 | Laura
This London’s four piece band is about to glow, and we will be there to see it happening
Bastille started like the solo project of Dan Smith, who like many other musicians, started writing songs a few years ago in his room. But then he decided he wanted to be in a band, so in 2010, he pushed things forward and embark a few friends to this project until they were a quartet, which consists of Dan Smith, Chris 'Woody' Wood, Will Farquarson and Kyle Simmons. Bastille, whose name comes from Bastille Day -the day Dan Smith was born- put some songs online, which made them gain visibility quickly, and then started rehearsing the songs, which were transformed by the new members of the band and came to life in different shapes and colours. Their first single ‘Flaws’, wasn’t going to be a single itself, but the ‘likes’ that the YouTube video got, made Smith decide to release it as one together with ‘Icarus’, which Smith defined as “sound-wise, rhythm-led, and quite upbeat sounding without having an upbeat sentiment. It’s not dark, but I basically just wanted to make pop music that had some integrity and had some sort of brains behind it and therefore wasn’t just disposable”. And that was their presentation card, which was released in 2011.
After, the neo-synth pop group, performed in festivals such as Glastonbury and the Island of Wight and released the EP’s Bad Blood and Overjoyed. Now they are about to release their first full-length album, Bad Blood, which will be out the 4th March. About the recording of the album, Dan Smith has said: "We basically made the album in a studio the size of a cupboard, so it was one extreme to the other. Producing the record, I wanted to off-set epic sounding instrumentation with lyrics that combine intimate stories or conversation. The contrast was something that appealed to me." For the songs, Smith wanted "each to be its own story with its own atmosphere which brings in different sounds and elements of production, incorporating aspects of the different genres and styles that I love: hip-hop, indie, pop and folk. But before the album comes out, they still have another single to release called ‘Pompeii’ which is “a moment of reflection and introspection, but they’re trapped in time so it's a moment that'll go on for an eternity," said Smith to NME. They are currently supporting Two Door Cinema’s Tour, but after the album relese, they will embark on a headline tour including two nights at London venue Shepherds Bush Empire.
By Laura Vila
