Bastille Interview – Station Sessions, St. Pancras 4/07/11

Watching an acoustic session in the middle of rush hour in one of London’s busiest train terminals seems a little odd down on paper. But it really isn’t in the slightest, it’s just like busking on a larger scale with the added bonus of an interested audience.

There’s been artists playing at this unique venue over the past month in aid of The Princes Trust Music and tonight it’s the turn of Bastille. The South London artist played a brilliant half hour stripped-down set, which included online tracks such as ‘Laura Palmer’, ‘Icarus’, the beautiful ‘Overjoyed’ and new single ‘Flaws’, which is out today. Dressed in a slouchy ash-grey hoodie, Dan Smith looks at ease as he performs to the intrigued crowd on the concourse. Some are even singing along with their own renditions, proving that Bastille are starting to progress up the music ranks and are on the road to becoming an established name.

I caught up with Dan Smith after the session, to discuss the past, present and future of Bastille.

Your first single, ‘Flaws’ is released today, how are you feeling about the release?

It’s taken a while, so I’m pretty excited. To be honest today is a bit of an anti-climax because it was released on iTunes a few weeks ago by accident, when it was meant to just be a pre-order but it’s nice to have to have something out. Also the song has been growing a little bit online.

There has been a buzz about you this year already, how has it been for you?

It’s been really fun and we’ve been really busy recently promoting the single and playing a bunch festivals. We did two little gigs at Glastonbury, which were wicked as well as Isle of Wight and Great Escape. We just played Blissfields this weekend and we’re playing at V Festival and Standon Calling.

Does it feel weird playing at such notable festivals, when festivals nowadays can be the making of a band?

It does and I’m really aware that obviously its early days for the band, so we’re just playing on little stages but it’s nice to get involved. I love festivals, I was going to Glastonbury regardless of whether we were playing it. I guess there’s always the hardcore music fans who will go and find new stuff and there’s those who flock to the main stage. But Glastonbury particularly is such a nice festival.

Your single was used in E4′s reality show, ‘Made In Chelsea.’ How did that come about?

I used to do solo stuff with a piano and a loop player a couple of years back and whilst I was doing that, I spoke to a this DJ on XFM called Marsha, who was DJing on XFM all the time back then. I didn’t speak to her for ages and then she left XFM and moved to Canada. She’s now in charge of music in lots of TV shows and I’ve just been speaking to her online over the past couple of months. She heard some of the Bastille stuff and really liked it and she helped get it in the show. It’s probably not necessarily what I want the music to be associated with but it’s been an amazing opportunity in terms of getting the song to a much wider audience. But in this really early stages of the band, having an audience like that is unbelievable. In fact, we’ve just been really lucky online with a series of things that have reached a wider audience than I ever expected.

How did it feel playing in the station just now?

Weird. Soundchecking, I always get really nervous and especially playing in a station where pretty much 90% of the people don’t care or have somewhere to be. But it was good though, I really enjoyed it. There was a nice amount of people and it was funny seeing some people singing along to a couple of the songs which are online, which never happens but when it does it’s cool. We all really enjoyed it, because we weren’t quite sure about playing so stripped back, as obviously it’s quite quiet.

Have you ever busked before at somewhere like this?

I have never busked and when we were sound checking I wasn’t expecting people to keep coming up and putting money in the bucket, which made it feel even more like busking. That kind of thing terrifies me, i don’t have the confidence to do that kind of thing so it’s good to have a first busking experience.

Where did the name ‘Bastille’ come from?

I was looking for a band name and its a really tricky thing to do. But I’m born on Bastille Day, 14th July and me and my friend were walking through a tube station and she saw a poster saying about Bastille Day. I was at my wits end trying to think of a name, so the name just stuck and people seem to like it. Though it’s slightly unfortunate that there’s about 50 other bands called ‘Bastille’ so we’ll probably have to change it at some point…

Finally, what can we expect from you over the next year and are there any plans for an album?

I’m about three-quarters of the way through recording the album, we’ve been working with the same guy since before we put anything online. It’s been quite nice as things have developed a little bit we just kept our heads down, kept working and getting on with it ourselves. I think we’ll have another single out in September/October time, which is looking likely to be a double A-side with ‘Laura Palmer’ and a song called ‘Overjoyed’ as they’re the two I want to push but who knows. We’d then be looking to release the album early next year.

‘Flaws’ is out now.