The Bastille Interview

Congratulations on your recent chart success – did you expect the album to do so well and has it properly sunk in?

We never even remotely expected it to go to number one, it really took us by surprise.

We flew to America the next day at 6am to play at a festival and spent the week there, so the whole week we were number one we felt quite removed from it.

The Tab (centre) meets Will and Dan 

Do you often feel quite removed from reality when you’re touring?

Dan: The bus drives through the night so you wake up each day in a new town. It’s really fun, but it does feel quite detached from humanity.

Playing a different gig every night, sound checking, doing interviews – like we don’t get to see much of the towns that we go to sometimes.

You’ve played in Oxford quite a few times before – like Gathering Festival and St. Hugh’s Ball.

Dan: We did – one of the first tours we ever did was the River Rat Pack. Us and four other bands lived on a barge for a week, 20 or something of us on a barge that sleeps 5, and then we went up the Thames and stopped at different towns every night and it finished in Oxford.

Will: I lived on a barge until I was about 5 – my parents used to deliver coal, like posh hippies who are like ‘yeah let’s be gypsies’.

Bastille started as Dan’s solo project, how did the rest of you get together?

Dan: We played together before we started the band, I’ve known them for quite a while.

I wrote and recorded a bunch of songs which ended up being the first Bastille songs, but I wanted it to be a band and feel more like a band.

Initially it was the four of us and two girls on the violin and cello – there had always been strings in the songs and when we first started rehearsing they were in all the time.

Will: Then we realised because they were amazing classical musicians they don’t need to rehearse as much! They can just turn up with music and play it.

From your music videos such as ‘Other Peoples’ Heartache’, you’re obviously really into cinema – could you see yourself doing a film soundtrack?

Dan: That’s the kind of thing I would love to do.

We’re in the process of making a short film – 3 or 4 songs running into each other that nod towards all the different styles of cinema that we like.

I’ve seen bands do it before and sometimes it’s a bit too pretentious or a bit boring, hopefully it’ll be fun. After banging on about film so much it’ll be nice to have a bit of control over something!

So you haven’t had much control over your music videos?

Dan: I was heavily involved and always have been, but there’s a point where there’s only so much that we can do.

With the Pompeii video, there’s a director and a massive crew and there were elements that I wasn’t hugely enthusiastic about, but you don’t want to be that dick who’s standing there going ‘I don’t want to do this’.

Part of collaborating is putting trust in other people to make decisions. We made the Flaws and now the Laura Palmer video with same director – I have complete trust in him as a person and what he does.

One of your press releases said you and Lana Del Ray would be ‘paired up in a heartbeat’ on Match.com – is she your ‘celebrity crush’?

Dan: I do think she’s pretty awesome. She’s created in her lyrics and stuff this quite weird Americana dark side world that I think is really interesting.

Will: What I think is nice about her is its almost a bit of a throwback, artists having a bit of a persona, like Bowie and Stardust…

I’m actually a bit in love and a bit stalkerish with Shingai from the Noisettes – for a while I used to sit on the internet and watch videos of her daydreaming about meeting her.

Hear Bastille’s Requiem for Blue Jeans here

Bastille’s album, Bad Blood, debuted at #1 in the UK album chart and is out now. http://www.bastillebastille.com/bad-blood-album/

Catch Bastille at The Secret Garden Party Festival 25th-28th July http:// www.secretgardenparty.com/#!/information/line-up-a-z/