Enter Shikari Guitarist Rory Clewlow Talks Brexit, Being An Indie Band & Their Upcoming Australian Tour

Earlier in the year, UK lads Enter Shikari released Redshift, another strong dose of their trademark electronic/metalcore serum. It didn’t take long for the band to announce a run of Australian tour dates in support of the release, bringing them back to their unofficial second home of Australia.

Needless to say, their loyal-legion of followers were stoked. After all, it wasn’t that long ago they were here supporting their latest album The Mind Sweep.

Music Feeds jumped on the phone with guitarist Rory Clewlow to get the run down. Thankfully he was up and atom already…

Rory Clewlow: I’ve been up for a few hours already. I have an 8-month year-old son so I have no choice about it really.

MF: A lot of things happenings in the world at the moment, it sort of feels like everything that Enter Shikari has been trying to warn us about is sort of happening now. Are you guys seeing that?

RC: It’s a very interesting time. It does feel like everyone’s becoming polarised, especially all the major parties. Did you ever see that episode of South Park where they took the Giant Douche and the Turf Sandwich, it’s like that that analogy that you can choose one candidate or the other but they’re both terrible.

But it doesn’t seem to be like that any more. It feels like the left is very far left and the right seems very far right. I mean. If you want to talk politics, you should speak to our singer Rou, but I mean it is a very interesting time at the moment.

MF: If only we had heeded your warning!

RC: [Laughs] Well, it’s not like we’ve been offering many solutions. We’ve just kind of been saying things…

MF: You’re heading down under in the name of your new single The Redshift, what was it in particular about the new track that inspired an Australian tour date?

RC: Actually, the last time we came over to you guys I think we were calling it The Mind Sweep Tour and so we just thought now, let’s call it The Redshift Tour. It was a very practical decision. Unfortunately there wasn’t any romantic reason behind it.

MF: You’ve now toured the world in the name of Mindsweep, is Redshift the fight indication of new music from Enter Shikari?

RC: Redshift was just a one off, recorded separately. We’re currently working on some new bits. I mean, actually at the time we recorded Redshift we did start recording something else. I don’t know what’s going to happen with that, if it’s going to be released. We might just throw a single out there…Or we might now.

That’s one of the great things about being independent. You just decide these things last minute without any sort of bureaucracy, planning, or anything. Apart from that, we’re throwing a few demos around amongst ourselves, which I’m very excited about. It’s a different sound to even Redshift. In true Shikari fashion, we’re re-writing out own rulebook again. We seem to do that for every album and it’s not intentional.

MF: You guys will be back in town in a matter of weeks for the shows, this time you’re bringing Hacktivist with you, You guys must be stoked to get back here…

RC:Australia is always so much fun because the people are awesome. I can’t remember where it is now but we always end up at the same Koala sanctuary. I’ve been there like three times and every time I’m like “oh yeah, I’ll just go check this out”. I go there and I’m like “oh yeah, this is the same place I’ve been to the same two times”. I guess I am always quite hangover.

MF: The news here has been exploding with BREXIT updates. Now that it’s been decided UK will be leaving EU, from your perspective, will there be many impact on recording and touring artists?

RC: It’s still early days to say. We’re still kind of negotiating with the EU what we’re gonna be doing with the trade situations and stuff like that. In the immediate aftermath made touring more expensive.

As soon as we left, the pound just dropped. But apparent from a financial impact, I’m not sure how much difference it’ll make. We’ll still be able to tour. I’m not sure if we’ll have to get Visas or not. That’ll be a pain in the ass.

–

Enter Shikari’s Australian tour kicks off next week. See dates and details below.