6 minute read
INTERVIEW: BASTILLE
FROM BEDROOM TO FESTIVAL
Bastille’s Dan Smith talks to Bex April May about high-production tours, low-fi songwriting and becoming a movie montage cliche
Technology is crucial to everything British modern pop-rock legends Bastille do. That’s particularly true of late, as the band’s latest album, “Give Me The Future,” and its recent three-part expanded edition, “Give Me The Future +
Dreams of the Past,” is a sci-fi exploration of the way our lives are entwined with technology: “every minute of every day,” frontman, founder and songwriter Dan
Smith tells us.
Aside from being BRIT Award winners, having sold more than eleven million records worldwide, and having just released the new album to rave reviews, the band has been on a near-constant touring schedule across the UK, US, Europe and festivals all over the world - all while recording and producing, too.
So, when we sat down recently with frontman, founder and songwriter, Dan Smith, during their world takeover, we were intrigued to know how his favourite audio production tech makes it all possible.
Speaking with Smith on the road at the massive
Sziget festival in Budapest, we discover the essential production tech he takes on the road, how tracks go from tour bus bunk to Will Smith-starring blockbuster, and get well and truly amped for festival season 2023…
AMI: We’re speaking to you at Sziget festival, which you’ve played multiple times - why are you such a fan of this festival?
We’ve been touring this weird world we’ve created with this album around the UK, Europe and America since the album came out earlier this year. and it’s fun to bring the concept show to a festival stage and see how people react. Sziget’s amazing. We’ve had such a good time there over the years. More than anywhere else in the world, it reminds me of Glastonbury, and is potentially the closest festival to it, in terms of how it feels to play Glasto. The lineup’s always ridiculous, and it goes on for a whole week, which I think is very impressive - so if you manage to survive that, hats off to you.
AMI: What can we expect from the live show?
I really love this show. It’s a lot of fun to play. It involves me sort of lying down on a therapist’s couch pretending to go into an inner tech world, which always makes you feel like a bit of an idiot, but so far, it’s been great! We’ve tried to put together a show that expands the world of the album, but also looks amazing and is fun to watch.
So, yeah, hopefully, hopefully hopefully people at Sziget will be into it.
AMI: Tell us about the tech you use in the show…
This tour specifically is so dependent on tech and electronic instruments. We have multiple laptops running at any one time, with loads of synthesizers coming out of them. Our drummer Woody’s drum kit is a kind of hybrid of acoustic drums and digital drums and pads, and at one point he uses an entirely electronic kit. Will, who plays bass and guitar, has even got a keyboard on this tour, to help him play sub-bass synths and various other things. For better or worse, we’re all teched up to our eyeballs. And that’s just in what you’re hearing - that’s before you get into the visuals at all. If there was a power cut on stage, we’d have to change tack very, very rapidly.
AMI: Speaking of touring, what tech do you always take with you when travelling?
Always a nice pair of noise cancelling headphones. The new Apple AirPods Max headphones are pretty great. We’ve been mixing all of our albums in spatial audio, and they are set up for that kind of totally 3D immersive mixing, so they’ve been really helpful on the road, sending notes back and forward for mixing albums. I got them for work purposes but actually they’ve also been great just to listen to albums and watch movies with as well.
AMI: You’re still songwriting, even when you’re on tour. What’s your go-to equipment for music production on the road?
I always bring my MacBook Pro - I’ve made all of our music right from the beginning on my Mac. I started in GarageBand and now I’ve moved on to Logic. It’s great, I can take it anywhere. All I need is my laptop, and then I have a little AKAI MIDI keyboard that plugs straight into it via USB. Then, I’ve got a Shure condenser mic which also plugs straight into my laptop - that’s basically all I really need. Obviously that doesn’t make the finished, mixed and mastered record, but for writing on the road, it’s perfect. it’s just like such a nice easy setup to start building a song.
AMI: Which Bastille tracks have you made that way while travelling?
So many of our songs started life in a weird backstage room somewhere, or on the tour bus. I remember writing “World Gone Mad”, which is a song that we did for the movie “Bright”. I was writing it in this funny little backstage room, and it ended up being in a film, and we got to make this mad video for it in LA with overturned cars and Will Smith!
AMI: That’s quite the journey…
I guess that’s because our music has always come from this bedroom-recording world, there’s always quite a strange journey from these songs that start life literally in my bedroom or in a bunk on a tour bus. I remember making some songs when we were in Argentina, playing a bunch of festivals a few years ago, that ended up being on our second album. There’s a song we have called “The Lesser Of Two Evils” that we did in a rainy industrial car park outside of a venue in Germany. I feel super lucky to get to travel and be able to make music like we do. It means that a lot of the songs, even if they’re not about the place that we’re in, have these associations in my mind of like where we were when we started to make them.
I think it doesn’t need to be complicated. And I’m not saying that I can do it all, by any means, but as someone that can’t play guitar, it’s nice to be able to have a way to still be able to write on the road.
AMI: What’s your favourite way to listen to music?
I’m very easily distracted. I think we all are, with the constant barrage of information coming through our phones. So, to listen to a full album, I like to go for a run, like when I was training to do the London Marathon a few years ago. It was a really nice space to like catch up on loads of albums I hadn’t gotten the chance to properly. There’s also something nice about listening to music while being on the bus. I like to put on my AirPods, connect to Spotify on my phone, look out of the window and take in all of an album. It sounds like a depressing film montage cliché, doesn’t it?
More info for 2023’s festival at szigetfestival.com.
Photo below by Sarah Louise Bennett
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