Who doesn’t love a double treat? And when it comes to music, the more, the merrier. Curated and created by the French Institute in India, in association with Alliance Francaise and Mixtape, the Bonjour India Festival will see two of France’s biggest bands – Colt Silvers and Last Train – tour Indian soil spanning across 11 cities, all through November and December.
Featuring vocalist Tristan Lepagney, bassist Nicolas Lietaert, guitarist Florian and drummer Julien, Colt Silvers delivers intense indie electro rock inspired by pop culture, while Last Train is a true-blue rock band comprising four childhood friends – vocalist Jean-Noel Scherrer, guitarist Julien Peultier, Drummer Antoine Baschung and bassist Timothee Gerard – who have been making music together for over a decade.
Catching up before their Bengaluru leg of the tour on November 30 at The Humming Tree, Tristan from Colt Silvers says the band is thoroughly kicked about their first visit to India. “It’s really cool. I don’t really know the country too well. We’re discovering the culture, the people and the landscape as we speak. Meanwhile, we are familiar with Bollywood music, Ravi Shankar’s sitar and the very lyrical music culture here. We love Indian music!” he exudes.
Timothee from Last Train echoes the same sentiment: “We’re a bit lost in a big country with huge cities but the experience so far is amazing. We are meeting other bands and discovering a whole new culture. Most importantly – we are playing our usual music. We’re not playing anything different because we’re in India. We want people to hear us as we are. At the same time, we hope to learn new things and take back new experiences.”
Tristan shares about the band’s set list. “It’s the same for the entire tour. We’re playing songs mostly from our third album Swords , filled with danceable and feel-good tracks. It’s not really a traditional outfit. Although we have keyboards, drums, high and low voices, we’re not your regular rock band. So I hope people here will enjoy it.”
Having played music for close to 10 years, Tristan says Colt Silver’s journey has been amazing. “We travel a lot. We’ve been playing together as friends for a decade and we’ve had a beautiful musical trip so far. Maybe in the future, we will add some Indian elements in our music as well. We already have a lot of Asian sounds in our music after our tour of China. We love Asian sounds generally. We would love to incorporate a sitar or a tabla in our songs soon.”
Last Train too has had over a decade of experiences. Timothee recalls: “We began playing together almost 10 years ago at school when we were around 11 years old. We just wanted to spend time and have fun together and music turned out to be our common interest.”
Fresh after their debut album launch, Timothee shares that the launch was their biggest step ever. We’ve been on tour since the last three years and it’s only getting bigger – it’s completely incredible that we’ve come all the way to India. We want to keep on touring and maybe come back to India later.”
Commenting on their music, Timothee says: “We want people to see that we are a live rock ‘n’ roll band. We’re four friends and we love playing music together everywhere. Its high energy and we want to transfer that energy to our audience.”
Catch Colt Silvers and Last Train along with Diarchy on November 30 from 9 pm onwards at The Humming Tree, Indiranagar. Visit www.bonjour-india.in.
