Escape To The Future… with Bastille!

Bastille are my favourite band and I finally got a chance to see them perform live in AO Arena in Manchester. Taking pictures at concerts is… not ideal, shall we say, but I had a hunch about how their show would look like and had already planned to post about it here.

It turned out to be exactly what I expected.

Bastille released their latest album Give Me The Future in February, and this is also the title of their tour. The general theme of the album is, let’s escape to the future of our dreams, the good future. Very plug-yourself-into-virtual-reality type of thing. I was curious if they would incorporate that into their show–and they did.

Feeling like,

If this is life,

I’m choosing fiction

Distorted Light Beam

I think I scored myself quite a good seat for taking pics.

The band’s frontman, Dan Smith in the white hoodie.

In the middle of the night

I can dream away

Change what I like

And go back to the future again

Back To The Future

Close up on Dan. I tried to capture as many colours as possible.

I didn’t use zoom–in fact I never do with my smartphone, as the photos come out of low quality, instead I take the picture normally and then crop out the parts I don’t want, and that’s what I did throughout this concert. With the above image, I left in another fan’s phone screen in, I feel like it captures the whole vibe.

In my head, in my head,

I escape with you,

When my dreams run away,

Run away with you

Why would I stay awake?

Stay Awake

Hundreds of phone lights during the slower tempo Oblivion (from the album Bad Blood).

Creation of Adam: The Cyber Version, maybe?

Hollywood has painted us a fucked up fate

Say you’ll resurrect me as a young deep fake

Genius minds fix all our crimes

So we can have fun, yeah?

We’re living in a sci-fi fantasy

I’m sleeping with the robot next to me

Find planet B, that’s all we need

So we can have fun

Plug In…

Confetti for the masses. At the end, they invited the two supporting acts (singer/songwriter Jack Garratt and the band The Native) on the stage for the closing number, Shut Off The Lights.

Thank you and goodnight.

The worst thing about the concert was that it had to end.

My favourite song from the new album is Back To The Future. Here’s the lyric video–how many references can you recognise?

Bastille on Spotify.

Quoted lyrics were all written by Dan Smith.