It’s not every day you find a band that are fronted by a lead singer who carried out research for the US Air Force and the International Space University in France.

Watching Dustin Bates and visionary sci-fi American band Starset is an usual experience with space suits and out of this world visuals. They have a new mixed reality app, developed by the firm Juniper Jones that includes space inspired visuals that fans can access using the app throughout the interactive live show, synced to the AR content as well as a pre-show countdown clock.

And where better for them to kick off their first UK headlining tour Immersion Part 1 than Manchester’s Academy, so close to where Ernest Rutherford split the atom and where Alan Turing worked on artificial intelligence.

VIVA went to find out more about their concept, The Starset Society.

Where are you all from?

The four core guys are from Ohio, Columbus.

Growing up have you shown much history in music?

Yes always, my mum had a Phil Collins tape. I think that was my first real exposure to something I really love

Before this what were you doing?

Before this, I had another band called Downplay for a number of a years and at the same time, I was going to school at the time getting a PhD.

What made you get together and form a band?

As an engineer who enjoyed science and space I wanted to blend that with my own passion for music, and there’s an overarching narrative with the group in the form of a novel actually a Marvel comic. And I wanted to do a band with a soundtrack to such a narrative. Starset and its cinematic approach all sort of spawned out of that.

Everything you do comes under this overarching concept called the Starset Society. How would you describe it to someone and what is your main goal with it? And what do you want to achieve with it?

The goal is to raise awareness of science and tech and how it’s changing our lives in both positive and negative ways as we progress into the near future. Things are changing exponentially, politically, socially, economically and we think that the general public aren’t following these changes to the extent that they should because it leaves them open to manipulation. These things aren’t going to change there going to happen no matter what. I think that if people aren’t aware of them they will feel like they have blind sighted.

Would you say you get your main inspiration for your songs from technology and science?

Some of the metaphors, a lot of the metaphors come from science and tech and it allows for a unique approach for the lyrics and it certainly inspires the soundtrack elements of the music as well.

Why the name Immersion Part 1?

Two reasons. Immersion is because we want to bring people into our world and immerse them in it. We call our shows demonstrations for that reason there an experience hopefully people are leaving their own lives for a moment and joining our aesthetic our world.

The Part 1 aspect alludes to the fact that this is just beginning and there will be an even larger one after that. We were considering not calling this leg Part 1 as because its smaller than the U.S one because that had a ton of production and because of budgetary reasons and stage size reasons we weren’t able to do as much. But it will still be a great show.

another drawing of @dustieboots , because i was bored.

[@starsetonline ] pic.twitter.com/L594DJTfLL

— Max (@starsetartguy) March 31, 2018

Is there going to be a Part 2?

Absolutely.

Have your written or planned any of that yet?

I leave it as a challenge for myself to beat this.

So there’s no timeframe for part 2?

Yeah, when the need arises ill design something.

I hear you have your own Graphic Novel with Marvel Comics how did this come about?

It’s the graphic novel version of the novel we actually put out the full-length novel. Yeah, we made a partnership with them a couple years ago. It came out really cool and I’m working on a second novel now that I hope we can do the graphic novel with Marvel as well.

What gave you the idea to branch into graphic novels and novels in general?

It’s an effective way to tell the narrative and the narrative is an essential part of the Starset society. The goal of the Starset society is to use all media to propagate our message.

Would you call yourself a massive comic book fan?

No. Very much a pedestrian fan the comics themselves are a really cool vehicle for the narrative.

Your comic book the Prox transmissions, what’s it about exactly?

It tells the inception story of the Starset society after they received a transmission from the future warning us of our imminent demise at the hands of manipulated technology.

What was it like working with Peter David the person behind comics such as the Incredible Hulk?

Amazing, I never got the chance to meet him in person but he did a wonderful job helping me translate the novel into a graphic novel version and I know that’s a process getting it boiled down to just simple panels and simple dialogue

 

I hear you have also launched an augmented reality app. For those who don’t know what does the app do?

So there are multiple phases. The phases we have released so far is just an initial live phase which a rocket ship comes in over the stage and does a figure eight and then launches right before we play. Then throughout the show, there is a planetary system in the ceiling.

Where there any challenges you faced as this has never been done before at a live concert before?

Yes certainly. The way we target and time things. We’re only going to make it cooler and more intense. We’ve done a lot of work on it

What was the main reason to say why you decided to do that app to accompany the show?

We’re a tech-based band and we incorporate as much media as possible to spread our experience and our message. And so it was a no-brainer that our fans would enjoy that next level experience and we are just getting started with it.

After this tour what’s next for Starset?

We go back and do a bunch of other shows in the U.S with various bands and festivals. Yeah, we’ll keep creating media there’s a lot to do.

For more details on Starset’s tour of Europe and the United States visit their website here.

The app is available to download here:
iOS – https://apple.co/2En82N7
Android – http://bit.ly/2DS1MMc