Enter Shikari
Art Should Be Available To All

27.02.2015

While trancecore is spreading like wildfire all over the planet, there is no rest for the band that is generally credited for if not originating, but at least breaking through the genre. “The Mindsweep”, the first album by England’s Enter Shikari in three years, came out in January and proved to all the skeptics, that the band from the small town of St. Albans does not intend to be a one- or two-album wonder. Many critics praised the new album as being the band’s most varied one, and we naturally got the urge to learn more about it directly from the musicians, even though touring in support of “The Mindsweep” started actually earlier than the record came out. Eventually this interview had to be done in close-to-combat conditions – frontman Rou Reynolds called us from Milan, where the band was preparing for a show in the midst of snow and storm.

I’ve heard you have severe weather conditions over there…

Yeah. We drove through the Alps last night and it was snowing pretty heavily. So yes, it’s pretty damn cold.

Are you excited for tonight’s gig?

Yeah, absolutely! It’s been a long time since we played here and we are looking forward to it. Everything is quite alright at the moment.

How is the tour going in general – you’ve only just started, right?

Yes, it’s our very first tour off “The Mindsweep” so we play a lot of new tracks. It took a while for us to be completely comfortable playing them. It’s always quite nerve-wrecking when you play completely new stuff. But all is going really well now.

I know that in spring you will visit Russia as part of this tour – namely, you will play in Moscow and Saint Petersburg this time. However in the past you have come to visit us quite a number of times and even did a small tour through Russia’s smaller towns last year. Enter Shikari is one of the very few international bands that pay attention to the small Russian towns. Why do you like visiting different places here? And what feelings do you have about coming back?

I mean, we love to tour anywhere! It’s amazing to see the different parts of the world, experience different cultures, meet different people. Russia’s always really good to us. We seem to have built up a really passionate fan base out there. So it was great to play these further towns and cities that bands don’t normally play, and I think that people really appreciated it as well. Russian fans are ones of the most enthusiastic audiences that we have – that’s why we love playing Russia so much. Everyone is so into what we’re doing – it’s great.

Judging from youtubes from your gigs of this tour, you’ve started using quite a lot of lights and special effects…

Yeah, we’ve put a lot of time and energy and money into production on this tour - it’s basically a structure that replicates the album artwork. There is lots of lighting which replicates the neuronal pathways in your brain. It’s pretty cool.

Let’s talk about the new album. You mentioned in one interview that it was the longest period of recording for you. Why did it happen and what did it bring on as a result?

It’s just nice to know you’ve got the time to be comfortable and able to just create the music that you want to create, to be able to experiment. I think it just really helps the whole process.

I’ve been listening to your new track “Anesthetist” and couldn’t help thinking about the whole current situation with NHS in the UK. And today a very similar story with free medicine happens in Russia. Did you want to comment on this general situation in this song or is this just my interpretation?

Yeah, definitely, it’s all about healthcare and the general climate of privatization at the moment. And regardless where you sit on the political spectrum, I think healthcare is something quite separate. We want to ask a question what’s the point in civilization if it’s not providing help or looking after the most vulnerable people in society.

Where does the name “The Mindsweep” come from and what does it stand for - for you?

The mindsweep is basically the withholding of new ideas. It’s about discrediting of new ideas, new philosophies, alternative ways of structuring society by those in power, those people who want to protect their wealth and their power.

A bit of Orwell.

Yeah, well it takes Orwell’s idea of the thought police in “1984”. We’re sort of influenced by that. The mindsweep is that action, that’s actually employed in real life.

The new album sounds very different from your previous ones, and there have been a lot of discussions about your experiments with the sound, about adding new instruments, you taking inspiration from listening to classical music, etc. Why did you make this sudden turn towards the analogue, why did you go for traditional instruments?

I think we found ourselves in a position of sort of being expected to use certain synths and to sound the certain way again. People love pigeonholing things. So we wanted to just do something against that. Also, in the whole metalcore world there is this real striving for such a polished, perfect sound with everything spot-on in time and really crisp and overproduced. I think for us coming from a punk background there is just something more beautiful about a human playing a real organic instrument. We wanted to capture that beauty.

I know you worked with Dan Weller on this album – and on the previous one (“A Flash Flood Of Colour”, 2012) too. What was his contribution to the sound of those records?

Ah well he’s great! He is now just like one of our best mates. When we get together it’s just a really comfortable atmosphere, it feels like a bunch of friends making music. And he’s really up for experimenting and he’s really good at managing the projects as well and making sure that we stay on time. He is a great songwriter himself, so he is able to chip in with ideas. He’s just a great dude!

“The Mindsweep” was available for streaming when it was out, it can also be downloaded or ordered online, etc. There have been a lot of debates that the music on the Internet should be available for free. What is your own opinion on this?

Well from a sort of wider stance, a philosophical angle, just a thought of arts not being available to everyone is something that I find a bit creasy. At the moment obviously within a system of capitalism you limit your audience by the purchasing power. And this is something that just does not feel right - art should be free and available to all. So immediately there is this strange kind of dichotomy that we are sitting in. In terms of streaming music I do not really see much of a difference between that and radio. You know, music has been free on radio for a long time. And with streaming it just means you can pick your own music and not have to listen to a shit tune which is every other tune on radio.

Will we be hearing more of Shikari Sound System?

We’ll be possibly doing some remixes. But at the moment we are just concentrating on Enter Shikari, obviously we have just released the album, so we are going to be touring for a long time. We are doing a lot of dj-sets with Shikari Sound System, but that’s about it at the moment.

So here is the final question: who is a fan of Game of Thrones in the band?

We’re all are! We watch it a lot on tour.

Right, so you just did that cover out of pure appreciation?

We did it on Radio1 session on BBC, and there you have to do a cover, but it does not have to be a theme tune or something. But it just seemed an obvious idea for us.

Enter Shikari on the Internet: http://www.entershikari.com

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Olga Stebleva
February 5, 2015
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