Making tracks all about their neck of the woods in the U.K., Enter Shikari pick up a manic pace as they tour throughout the U.S. With a large following of fans waving fingerlights, the band manages to drop three EPs, climb the U.K. rock charts and dominate all live shows without being signed to a major record label. It wasn’t all honey and milk for the band. Touring for two years, but never getting any real recognition, the band started their very own record label, Ambush Reality. With so many stamps being placed on them, Smashed Chair got a chance to clear things up with guitarist “Rory,” vocalist “Rou” and drummer Rob from Enter Shikari. We present to you some of what went down before these guys annihilated The Troubadour in West Hollywood.
Smashed Chair: Have you heard the new Horse the band album?
Liam “Rory” Clewlow – Didn’t realize they had a new album.
Roughton “Rou” Reynolds - When did it come out?
Rob Rolfe - It’s really weird, those guys get no press. I don’t know why. We’ve seen them play on both tours.
Liam “Rory” Clewlow - We played with them on their last tour.
Rob Rolfe - They’re an underrated band.
Smashed Chair: Did they have any influence on Take to the Skies?
Liam - Most of the songs were written before we even heard of them. They may go onto influence us in the future.
Rob - We’ve listened to a bit of them before we released the album. We might have taken a bit from them without even knowing - We’ve taken a bit from everyone we know. You know, we’ve listened to them quite a lot, but there might be a certain song that might sound like them.
Smashed Chair: Which videogames influence your synth tracks?
Rob Rolfe - Golden Axe.
Rou - Streets of Rage
Rob Rolfe – Road Rash, Sega Mega drive.
Liam – John Madden. The first John Madden game. For the Sega Mega. The music on that is amazing.
Smashed Chair: In terms of replicating that, is that a difficult endeavor?
Rou - I don’t think we really – the synth lines are not trying to be retro computer games. I think the influence is more from 90s trance, dance and house stuff.
Rob – It’s more the fact, Nintendo-Core bands – we don’t get a long with that.
Smashed Chair: How do you guys feel about that whole Nintendo-Core label that you keep getting?
Rou - It’s a little-bit gay. I mean we get locked in with a lot of gay stuff.
What are some other things that you get labeled with?
Liam – There’s the whole “neu rave” scene.
Rou – Glowsticks in general.
Smashed Chair: Klaxons type thing?
Everyone: Yeah. Ugh.
Liam – Yeah, we seem to get a lot of weird type genres that we’ve never really sounded like.
Rou – Yeah, that whole nerdy geeky thing.
Liam – I obviously think that for some bands that sound works – Especially HORSE the Band – they have some wicked songs.
Rou – I remember when I first heard “Cutsman” I thought, wow, this is fucking really good.
Smashed Chair: Your band went out and started your own record label. Do you feel that it’s necessary for smaller bands to do this?
Rou – It’s not just the case of our personal situation. We played for two years, really heavily touring and nothing was happening. We just had to release something. We put our heads together, got a lawyer to do all the stuff and made our own company and we released “Sorry You’re Not.” That was the first single on our label and it kind of works.
Smashed Chair: So, you went around the red tape of getting singed in the traditional sense?
Rou – Yeah, it’s not going to work over here. We’re not going to build it up from scratch.
Rob – It’s not like we purposefully stayed away from any other labels, it’s just what happened at the time.
Rou – It’s not like some DIY ethical thing. Though that’s what we’ve done with everything we’ve done. Some bands should sign to major labels, but that’s just not for us.
Smashed Chair: How are you guys keeping sane while on tour?
Rou – I’m reading a book on meditation, which is quite interesting.
Rob – Those really long drives, after about twelve hours, you start to get a bit silly.
Liam – You start stealing pillows.
Rou – We’ve stolen like 85 pillows from hotels on tour.
Rob – I think one them charged us like forty-five pounds a pillow.
Liam – Forty-five dollars.
Smashed Chair: So you guys were building a pillow fort.
Rou – We were going to call it “The Nightly Pillow” tour. So, a pillow every night.
Smashed Chair: If you could be anything, besides rock stars, what would you be? A cowboy, a gypsy or an other?
Rob – A Buddhist monk.
Liam – Pilot.
Smashed Chair: Modern day pilot? Red Barron type?
Liam – Yeah, like Spitfire.
Rou – It would have to be a Buddhist monk or ninja.
Liam – You know Buddhist monks can’t have sex?
Rob – Fuck that! Ninja.
Rou – It’s probably a lot more fulfilling, to be a monk.
Liam – I get to have sex 30,000 ft. in the air.
