Enter Shikari Interview

Post hardcore St Albans group Enter Shikari, formed in 2003, were a breath of fresh air when they started getting airplay on major radio stations, and have become well established in a relatively short time. When you think about it they‘ve actually only released two albums, but have rightfully earnt themselves a reputation for energetic live perfomances, and put a great deal of thought into what they release. Brandon has been recently discovering the joys of Enter Shikari and wanted to find out more. He speaks to Rob Rolfe.

You have a new DVD ‘Live From Planet Earth’ containing a number of your live shows, given that you have a strong reputation as a live band, how do you aim to live up to that in the DVD?

- Well it‘s a whole bunch of stuff from all over the world showing our big full production shows to the sweaty dirty small and manic shows, just really gives an idea of what we‘re like in every situation, not always on the dot with performance but always work hard to put on a good show (story of Rory‘s life).

We saw the Pietros Pizza clip of Rou disappearing off the stage and appearing on top of the pizza shop. What was that about? Does he tend to do that often? Ever gone wrong much?

- Hehe, sometimes we think we should put a leash on him. Nah, it‘s all just part of the show and doing something different than just standing on stage playing our instruments. He‘s quite often got stuck in the crowd and not managed to get back in time for his vocal or electronic parts and we have to wait for the audience to give him back to us.

We read the bit about batty wearing “the hat" and get the impression this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. What have been the best tour wind ups so far?

- To be honest, they usually only happen when we‘re drunk so can never remember them unless someone had the video camera out at the time. I have to say though we don‘t play as many pranks as we used to when we were a younger band. We‘ve got to the point now where this is our lives and we want it to be as comfortable as possible on a long tour so tend not to p*** each other off.

Noticed on your Twitter account that you did some volunteer work in Baltimore with your crew. How did you get involved in this and how did it go?

- It went really well, although I‘ve got muscles aching I never knew I had. There have been emails and people talking about it for a while so we decided to put our names down. It was for a great cause and very rewarding even though we had nothing to gain from it. But sometimes selfless acts can be the most pleasing to do.

On your website you use the line from your new single Quelle Surprise “If you stand for nothing you will fall for anything", which is a quote from one of the founding fathers Alexander Hamilton. Do you draw a lot of inspiration for your songs from politics?

- We don‘t really like politics or politicians, they don‘t do anything or help anyone, they don‘t teach, invent, create, they just talk in circles and never make enough change to make any kind of impact. What we look at is positive changes that help the progression of the human race.

It’s clear the Zeitgeist movement has a great impact on your lyrics but you said in a previous interview “Zeitgeist inspires us to not follow conventional thoughts about music." How do you use ideology to inspire creativity?

- It inspires us to not look at music in modern terms of segregation in scenes or genres. It allows us to appreciate music as an art form without any boundaries or traditional assumptions of what it should sound like. It also makes us appreciate that music is neither good nor bad, it is all subjective.

Do you also draw any inspiration from challenging political media figures such as Michael Moore, Chris Morris or maybe UK based Political Comedian Mark Thomas?

- We take inspiration from everything we see or hear, some things we will take more from than others so certainly when people are talking about matters that we feel strongly about we‘ll obviously listen a lot more carefully to what they have to say.

Given that so much music is filled with shallow messages, very easily available and appealing to only a specific group, can music with a deeper political message rise above all of that and change the world?

- We‘re certainly not arrogant enough to think that we‘re going to change the world but we believe in leading by example. As Gandhi said “be the change you want to see in the world". We just hope that people can listen to what we have to say and maybe get some inspiration to do the right thing when they get the choice to.

I saw the video of ‘No Sleep Tonight’ and was quite struck by it. What’s the inspiration behind that?

- It basically visualises the lyrics and shows our frustration at big business‘s obsession with short term profit over environmental sustainability and responsibility.

Noticed that the members as well as being in the band you have a lot of outside interests and musical side projects, is it hard dividing your time between them?

- Heh, yeah to be honest 99% of our time is taken up with the band so anything we do on the side is for fun when we get the chance.

To find out more about Enter Shikari, their tour dates and latest news, you can find their website here: http://www.entershikari.com/

Enter Shikari will also be playing at this years Leeds and Reading Festival.

Interview by Brandon