With weekend long camping festivals boasting huge headliners and 3 days of music, inner-city festivals sometimes seem to go unnoticed. Even underestimated, which simply is not fair. With benefits such as, boosting local music venues and also bringing the music to the fans, as oppose to taking the fans to the music. BushStock is one of those inner-city festivals and will take place this weekend in the heart of Shepherds Bush. With Shura, Bear’s Den, Dan Croll and Vant gracing the festival, we asked Mattie from Vant all about their opinion on BushStock.
Stephen McMahon: You’ve released a few songs over the past year, and we know you have more songs after watching your performance at Y Not Festival last summer. So when are we going to see an album?
Mattie: The very beginning of 2017 but there is a lot of stuff coming between now and then, so don’t fret.
Stephen: You’ve been receiving some great radio response. To what extent has this helped your journey?
Mattie: Massively, it’s had a real impact on our live shows, with the majority of the gigs on the last tour selling out, hopefully we can keep that momentum going in to the festival season!
Stephen: BushStock is quite an early festival in the summer season, are you treating it as a warm-up to other festivals, or a festival in its own right?
Mattie: It definitely feels like a warm-up especially with the intimate nature of the venues, it’s going to be a sweaty one.
Stephen: There has been an incredible history of acts who have performed at BushStock. (George Ezra, Hozier, Bastille, Daughter). Do you think you have the potential to be on par with these names? Perhaps in the years to come, have BushStock bragging how you performed there.
Mattie: Obviously we are a completely different band to those acts but we are just as ambitious and I’d like to think we’ll be able to build our own audience to that level.
Stephen: How important are these inner city festivals in relation to keeping our music venues striving?
Mattie: I love inner city festivals but it’s a bit like getting a dog for Christmas, we need punters to support their local independent music venues the whole year round, not just for one weekend!
Stephen: What differences are there between inner-city festivals and camping festivals, from a bands perspective?
Mattie: Less mud and better sound vs more people and more debauchery.
Stephen: What acts are you going to see on the day?
Mattie: We’ll try and catch our friends The Big Moon but to be honest it’s a bit of an in and out job as we have to drive to the Netherlands the next day!
Stephen: What do you do on stage to set yourself apart from the other acts?
Mattie: We’re pretty energetic and I guess our songs offer a different subject matter to a lot of bands around at the moment.
Stephen: What do you as a band hope to achieve in the near future? (12 months)
Mattie: A successful record and much bigger shows
Stephen: What would be the ultimate goal for you as a band to achieve in your entire music careers?
Mattie: World peace, the impossible dream. I like to live in the present and enjoy each step of the journey, too many people are concerned with the long game when it is entirely possible that we could die tomorrow.
Vant will be performing this Saturday [18th June] at Deflector’s Weld from 21:45 until 22:30 as part of BushStock festival.
For more information on BushStock festival, click here
