Music fans making fans with music: A brief background on Bastille

UK band Bastille is set to play in Manila in January. They are known for blending pop sensibilities with synthesizer sounds—which the author notes is becoming a trend in independent music circles—and won British Breakthrough Act at this year's BRIT Awards. Here's a primer on where Bastille came from and where they are headed.



The ensemble started life as vocalist Dan Smith’s solo project, and the band’s name in fact derives from his birthday, which is July 14. Before this, he had already been writing his own tunes. However, the band’s musical roots go way back.

“We've all been massive music fans since we were kids,” says Smith in an email interview with GMA News Online, “Woody [Chris Wood, the band’s drummer] and Will [Farquarson, bassist] always wanted to try and play music as a job, so they both played in bands for years. Kyle [Simmons, keyboards] was in a band with his school friends before he went to University.” During Smith’s time at university, his friends encouraged him to play in public, though he had been composing songs since he was a teenager.

After releasing some solo material, it took Smith a while to get noticed. Wood was his first collaborator, and the other members eventually followed. From being a solo project, Bastille eventually became a real band.

As Smith notes, “When we started rehearsing and touring together it was immediately obvious that we were a band. It's way more fun being in a band than trying the solo thing.” Not long after they started, they were offered a record deal, and in 2013, EMI released their debut album
Bad Blood, whose singles “Overjoyed” and “Pompeii” got them widespread notice.

Since then, the band has been touring the world, and the next logical step after that would be another record. However, Smith notes, they are still working on it: “We've been working on the new album all year, but because we've been so busy traveling and touring it has been difficult finishing things off. We've set aside most of the beginning of next year to finish it off, so hopefully we'll start to get through it pretty soon.”

Asked how it would differ from Bad Blood, he says, “It will be very different…there's loads more guitars on it and I think it will sound a bit darker than our last album.”

One question I wanted to ask, as they are themselves big music fans, was what other artist’s music they have been listening to lately. Smith gave the name of fellow English singer-songwriter FKA twigs. “I’ve been listening to [her album] LP1,” he said, “It sounds like nothing else and I think it's brilliant. Her voice is amazing and the production is incredible.” He adds that he and Simmons watched her in LA recently, and was duly impressed by her stagecraft too. “We were completely blown away to see how she brought her music to life on stage,” he says, “and her dancing is incredible.”

We are looking forward to seeing whether Bastille themselves would be as impressive. Band dancing is optional, of course. — BM, GMA News

Bastille will be performing at the World Trade Center on January 5, 2015. For more information, visit Karpos Multimedia's Facebook page.