Interview with Enter Shikari drummer Robert Rolfe and bassist Chris Batten

Check out the song: “Zzzonked”

Take a dash of punk, add a shot of electronic and a pinch of pop and you have yourselves the insane Enter Shikari. Enter Shikari are 4 young gents from England who have made something completely unique and captivating with their music. They just finished a tour supporting The Devil Wears Prada on their Dead Throne Tour along side Whitechapel and For Today. They are looking forward to the new year and the release of their newest record, A Flash Flood Of Colour. Recently I had a chance to sit down with drummer Robert Rolfe and bassist Chris Batten to have a little chit chat about what’s been going on.

So how’s the tour going so far guys?
Robert: It’s going very well! The crowds have been excellent, the other bands have all been very nice. They are great people, just a bunch of really nice guys. So yea, we’ve come right down to the end now, we have like 3 or 4 shows left and I feel this tour has been very successful.

Any memorable moments happen on this tour?
Robert: I forget what city it was in, but one night we managed to get all the bands and everyone on the tour together and go to a small bar where we were the only ones in there and that got a bit messy… to say the least.

Chris: There have been a couple of funny nights out, but as for the audiences, in Worcester we had a really big crowd response. Also, in Santa Cruz we had the entire room just jumping and getting really into it.

So the new album, A Flash Flood Of Colour, is supposed to be released January 16, 2012 and your first single “Sssnakepits” was released September 20th 2011. Why such a big gap from single release to the albums international release?
Chris: I think with this album we just wanted to set ourselves up with a long campaign to run on for promotion. We have had it done for a while now and just wanted people to get a taste of it before the full thing came out.

I learned that on this album you worked with old Sikth guitarist Dan Weller, how was that? What did he bring out of you that you haven’t done before?
Robert: He’s fantastic. We first started working with him on our last album and he came in to work with the guitars, he just works really well with our ethics and the way we work in the studio as a band and I feel he just molds it together really really well. We all kind of throw ideas all over the place and he sits back and brings them in, builds something smooth of our recordings. We just work very well together and I’m not sure if that’s because he is close to our age or because he is a lad just like us. We are just very close as people in that respect. The work environment was ours, it wasn’t like working with some old fuddy duddy who was stuck in a mold. Dan is very open to new ideas and experimentation.

With the huge electronic implications of your music I was curious what electronic artists inspire you?
Robert: There’s these couple of guys out of Holland called Noisia who we are really big on, I mean we love everything they do, it’s just so at the front of its time. The sounds they create and the ideas they have in their music are very inspiring, we take a lot from them. Then there are bigger artists like Prodigy who we actually had the chance to tour with on a big arena tour in Europe not too long ago. It was literally a dream come true to play with one of our favorite bands. We take a lot of inspiration from them and it’s great to see them at this point in their career still absolutely on top of their game. The last album they produced is arguably one of their best and they still fucking kill it live… just so inspiring.

Thank you for answering my next question. It was: with the huge electronic feel of your music, what electronic band would you want to tour with. So now I am going to just ask what band in general would you like to tour with?
Chris: It’s hard to say because our number one answer was always The Prodigy. [laughs] I guess Refused would be another band up their on that list. When we were first started out we had never heard of them and people kept telling us to check them out and when we did we just thought wow this is amazing, if they ever toured again I would love to tour with them.

You guys signed to Hopeless Records this year, why did you decide on Hopeless?
Robert: I think it was because they are really big fans of the music and we’ve had quite a bad experience with Interscope so over in the U.K we haven’t had the best experiences with record labels. Hopeless just seems to care a lot about their bands, they are doing everything for the right reasons and already we can see the enthusiasm coming from them. They are wanting that album released really badly and they were pestering our manager for details on the name of it and everything about it and that is just really great to see. Before with Interscope it was like trying to get blood from a stone and now it’s completely different. We all think this will work really well for us and them.

If Enter Shikari was an ice cream flavour, what would it be?
Robert: It would have to be loads of different ice creams. I think it would have to be chocolate for sure, mint chocolate for that little spice and cookie dough for the heaviness.

Check out the song: “Sssnakepit”

You also released a live DVD this year called Live From Planet Earth. Why did you decide to release a live DVD?
Chris: It has been coming for a long time, we had always planned to release a live DVD. We have been gathering all the video, all the audio and we have been telling everyone that we will be making one. Over time it just kept getting pushed back and pushed back, but finally we were able to release it. On the main disc it’s 2 shows: one show in Hatfield and a small show in London and it’s really great to see the different contrasts between small club shows and one with bigger production with the lights and everything.

Being such a crazy and energetic band on stage, what is the craziest thing you have seen in the crowd or pit during one of your shows?
Robert: We saw a kid lose a finger. It was in Sheffield and the speakers had these big grills on them and one kid climbed up and jumped off, but one of his fingers was stuck in the grill!! That was pretty grim. Also, when we played “Tea In The Park”, A festival in Scotland: a kid climbed up one of those giant tents which must have been a good 15 to 20 feet in the air and the kid dived off into the crowd!! He got kicked out of the festival right after that.

Chris: One show in Berlin, it was a very small stage and I stepped on the microphone cord when Rou was spinning it or something, but the microphone popped out and flew into this little girl’s nose. There was blood pouring out right away… she will be telling everyone Enter Shikari made me ugly.

So what are your plans for after this tour?
Chris: Christmas!

Robert: Family and friends, we finally have some time at home with everyone.

Chris: We have the album release January 16th so we will also be practicing over Christmas to get the new songs up to par to play live and we have a bunch of programming to do for all of that. We have some in store shows in the new year, two in London and one in Leeds. Then we hit tour for the rest of the year. We have Australia and Europe then back over in North America in May and after that we are in the summer which means Festival time.