Bastille to headline Pentaport Rock Festival

By Park Jin-hai

British indie rock band Bastille will perform at the Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival, kicking off on Aug. 11 for a three-day nonstop music festival at the Songdo Moonlight Festival Park in Incheon.

The four-man band, ahead of their second visit to Seoul, says the great crowd response at its first solo concert in 2015 here encouraged the band to return.

“The crowds were brilliant and we absolutely loved the show we played last time. It was also amazing to visit Seoul and we’ve talked loads about wanting to spend more time in Korea,” said frontman Dan Smith, during an interview with The Korea Times last week. “We’re excited to bring lots of the songs from our new album to Korea for the first time. It’s fun for us to have a whole host of new songs to mix in with our older ones.”

Bastille, which started out in 2010 as Smith’s solo project, expanded to include keyboardist Kyle Simmons and bassist and guitarist Will Farquarson. Since its independently released debut single, which sold only 300 copies, the band has come a long way. The band’s first studio album “Bad Blood” in 2013, which included hit songs like “Pompeii,” sold more than 4 million copies worldwide.

“I made a lot of the first album on a laptop in my bedroom after college and after work. We all had at least one or two jobs each. We used to rehearse at night, and we used to have to drive ourselves around the country. So we were quite DIY when we started out. I made the logo for our band in Microsoft Paint. We never really set our sights that high,” the singer said. “When the first album was blowing up and Pompeii was doing well all over the world, it was such a mad, indescribable time when we were always traveling and doing TV shows and promos. We never expected our music to do as well as it has done so we are just massively excited and grateful that it has and that we’re still allowed to make music as a job.”

The band released its second album “Wild World” last September. The latest music videos include a lot of narrations from movies, giving the feeling that they are more like movie clips than music videos. “I’m a huge film fan and I want all our music videos to feel like little films. It’s a fun opportunity when making a video to make something that is a creative accompaniment to the song,” Smith said.

These days, when rock music loses its presence to, say, electro-dance music, the singer says the timeless charm of rock music lies in its “liveness” and “experience-sharing.”

“Being able to watch human beings make music live on stage is something that’s really exciting. It’s nice to share a one-off experience with the people who are there,” he said.