Full transcript: Rou Reynolds on London Real
8:09 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose, we’re sponsored today by the folks at Bulletproof Coffee which we’re both having sips of right now. It’s a coffee that’s free of molds and toxins. You mix it up with grass-fed butter, yes I did say butter, and some MCT oil. It probably looked a little strange when I was making it for Rao, and I think it’s inspired by like a Tibetan yak tea, and you kind of drink it in the morning.
8:31 It’s got like this butter and this caffeine, and it kind of is a meal replacement, so you skip all those nasty breakfast foods you’ve probably been eating, like cereal and… Oh, sugary business. Yeah, chocolate croissants and all that stuff. So anyways, they’re also a biohacking company. I’ve got some videos coming out on sleep hacking that are sponsored by those guys.
8:47 So thanks to the guys at Bulletproof. My guest today is Mr. Rao Reynolds, who is the lead singer, electronics, and lyric writer for Enter Shikari, which is a British band formed in 2003. You guys incorporate post-hardcore, an alternative metal with dubstep, trance, and it’s an extremely unique sound that you guys have. I’ve actually been watching a bunch of videos today, and it’s really good.
9:13 I didn’t know about you until we were introduced by the guys over at the Zeitgeist Movement a couple days ago. So thanks for coming today. I know you’re going over to Z-Day, which is actually today. And you’re gonna give a talk tonight at Z-Day. I think your talk is called Defending Music’s Social Value.
9:30 I wanna hear a bit more about that. Raoul, welcome to London Real. Thank you, have fun with me. Good to be here. Yeah, it’s crazy.
9:38 Part of me when I was looking at your videos, I was like, it’s a real shame you don’t haven’t heard of these guys. And then I’m like, you know what? This is a good thing, because it’s kind of fun discovering something for the first time and checking them out, you know. I’m not making comparisons between you guys and London Real, but you said you were seeing some of our old episodes, and so it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Oh, absolutely.
9:55 No, you’re constantly finding out new sort of sources of information, new bands. You know, you’ve got to keep yourself being updated, you know, in touch. It’s weird though that, you know, with a piece of social media, I guess you call it social media like YouTube, it’s like all this stuff is out there, and you just don’t know it’s there. Isn’t that weird? And in the past, I would have had to see you on tour or know someone that knew you guys, but now with YouTube, I can check out your 10-year history.
10:22 Yeah, it’s crazy. The videos we discover from like, I don’t know, 10 years ago or something, they’re just like, God, it’s like a big part of our lives is just on YouTube. It’s scary, but it’s awesome. Because your memory is bad, so it helps. Oh, of your life, like performances of you guys and videos you made.
10:41 Yeah, it’s all sorts of footage from throughout our lives. I guess being in a band, a large part of your life just gets documented anyway, so yeah, it’s crazy. Yeah, it’s weird. I don’t know if you ever listened to a guy named Terrence McKenna, but he was a guy that used to talk a lot about psychedelics and things like that back in the 80s and 90s. And this whole theory of the fact that you can put something on YouTube and you can see what Rao was doing five years ago or 10 years ago, and you can have this image and it never goes anywhere.
11:08 It’s a really weird thing as humans It’s only happened relatively recently where you can have these snapshots of who you were in the past and yeah, it’s kind of weird I think it sometimes makes us not value the moment as much, you know You probably you know friends of yours that are always tasty taking pictures when you’re hanging out and posting them to Instagram Yeah, maybe you’re that guy. I don’t know. Well, you see especially our shows, you know, we’re looking out Putting you know our heart and soul everything into this music people with the iPads and phones. Just come on Yeah, and it happens a lot these days.
11:40 I was at a Beyonce concert a week or two ago and I took my girlfriend, I’ve got points for the whole year for doing that, so I was really proud of myself. A lot of the audience was holding their phone up, and I was thinking, you’re probably never actually going to watch that video again. Maybe you’re going to post it, maybe you’re going to show someone, but it’s like… Distorted sound. Yeah, and you kind of want to record the moment, but you’re probably not going to relive the moment, and then should you put the phone down and be in the moment.
12:05 I don’t know if I shouldn’t be telling them what to do, but some musicians complain to the audience, right? They’re like, would you put your phones down, right? There’s some guys out there that do that. Yeah, I mean, you know, if that’s what people want to do. I can’t complain because, as I say, my memory’s awful, so if I have a way of reliving a moment, even if it is this kind of crappy, distorted video, at least, you know, it will just bring back the memory and the emotions of that moment, I suppose.
12:30 You know, when I look at your music, it seems like you guys have always been a a group that did what you guys felt and didn’t allow yourself to be categorized or grouped into a kind of one genre and you guys would mix this with this and things that don’t normally mix together. I’m not a music guy but that’s when I first noticed about you guys and not to mention say what you want to say because a lot of your lyrics and messages are very political and very environmental and I was just wondering if that’s something that you guys consciously did or is it something that just evolved that way? I think it just evolved.
13:04 I mean, we started, well, I’ve been playing in bands with most of the guys who I’m in the band with now, actually, since I was 12, 11, 12, I guess. But yeah, and Shikari started when we were about 17, 18. And it was, as that was starting, we were kind of getting into like hardcore punk, like music that was really visceral sort of passionate but it also had a reason to be you know they were they were shouting about things that they believed in and that started to inspire us you know like I guess coming from sort of an alternative music background watching all these bands play it’s the live experience it is you’re very much in the moment you know for instance our band we’re running around on stage like headless chickens like most of the time so for us it sort of became very important that if we’re going to use our music as a kind of a release and a way of exerting energy, and you have a sort of cyclical energy with the audience, then it has to be about something that we really believe in, something that we want to shout about. And I think we also had a couple of run-ins like with our local council, for instance, this is back in Hertfordshire, they did very little for like music scenes and youth kind of overall really. So I guess that gave us a kind of almost disrespect for not just for the council but for sort of on a more widespread scale as well just kind of not just respect the traditional power structures you know just without
14:49 Question. So it made us become sort of quite analytical. Because they weren’t doing anything for the community like specifically? Yeah I mean they it’s crazy the stuff they’ve done that there was one youth club really in St Albans where it’s the only place where kids could go and watch bands that there’s about one other music venue which is 18 plus and they’ve been trying for years and years to close this place down and it was a constant battle throughout our music scene to sort of fight against that and it just it just showed the disconnect from the council because they thought it was just you know this this bad place for kids to be and it was anything but that it was taking kids off the street it was giving them all there’s some great bands that our local scene was thriving and I guess it did a good thing as well because it created a real sort of strong community around the music and you know we’re fighting the man you know to keep our gigs going sort of thing so it helped create you in a weird way yeah yeah definitely I I mean, it culminated in, I think the last time we played our hometown, which sent Albans in Hertfordshire, in a gig at the, well, it’s called the Auburn Arena.
15:58 It’s not an arena, it’s like a panto venue. And the council sort of made a clause that, I mean, they tried to shut the show down from the time we booked it, basically. But luckily enough, by that time, we had quite a big booking agent as part of our team. So we were able to fight, again, the council, even at a bigger stage. What year was this?
16:22 God, 2010, maybe? OK. So you were already pretty well established. Yeah, this is sort of a homecoming show sort of thing. Yeah.
16:32 And they actually said the show can go ahead, and that was like a victory. This was like literally the day before it went up to that. It was this constant fight. But they said on one condition that we have, I think it was 10 or 12 plain clothed police officers within the venue. Just, you know, going around, literally just snoop.
16:52 I don’t know what they’re expecting the kids to be doing. I mean, our music, even though we’re influenced by like dance culture, we don’t have sort of a drug fan base, you know, that’s not really part of who we are. We’re also influenced by hardcore punk, which promotes the sort of straight edge life, like drug free life and stuff like that. So I don’t know what they were looking for, but the hilarious thing was the only arrest, or I’m not sure it was arrest or sort of, they took someone out of the venue and the only person that was, was one of the security guards because he didn’t have his license, his security license, his CRB license, something like that.
17:30 So it’s just like, well, there you go. But you guys, I mean, mosh pits, you’re no stranger to mosh pits, right, at your venues. So does that scare the local authority? I suppose, yeah, when you look at that, Yeah, just kids flailing about, you know, pushing each other and all sorts of things. I mean, yeah, I still, I was at a show last night, a friend’s band, Architects, and I was on the balcony looking down at this sprawling mass.
17:56 I mean, their music is maybe a lot more intense than ours, it’s like real sort of metal, metal core. And yeah, it was just, it was crazy, it was intense, you know, just like, yeah, mashing and flailing arms everywhere. Do you still call it mashing these days? Yeah, I guess. There’s different types. There’s hardcore dancing, which is more of an art, it’s more of an actual dance form, and there’s just moshing and pogering and jumping up and down and bashing into each other and all that thing. I never really got that, to be honest.
18:27 I can understand that the music is so passionate and gets the adrenaline going and you want to dance about a bit and not have to worry about maybe bumping into the next person. Will your gigs always feature some type of marsh scene in the very front? I guess, yeah. But I mean, I think, again, coming from a sort of hardcore punk background and the music scenes within those genres is very concentrated on the community, very concentrated on helping each other and unity and things like that.
19:01 So when it may look like just a mass of flailing limbs and sweat and whatever else, it’s actually, You know, everyone there is looking after each other, if someone falls down, you pick them up and stuff, but yeah, I think now we’ve got to the point where we can just encourage people just to dance and have a good time, you know, just use the show as a release. You don’t have to dance a certain way or, you know, something like that. We try and keep it open, I suppose.
19:25 I remember, I moved to New York City in the early 90s and my roommate, he was in a band, and so when we would go watch them, the group of like 10 or 20 of us would kind of get in the mosh scene, but we kind of knew each other, you know, but I would say in general most most of the mosh pits that you know they’re looking for some aggression but everyone is looking after each other because if someone did want to hurt you in a mosh pit it doesn’t take much like a well-placed elbow will pretty much take you out yeah so it usually is a pretty good vibe going on right yeah again that’s why I think the hot the hardcore punk influence whether it’s hardcore dancing where you literally give you give each other your sort of space and you know it’s if you’re running into each other everyone knows and everyone in that the area of the room where that’s happening is in that area for a reason. So as long as you don’t go charging to say a bit further back where people are just leisurely having a nice drink watching a band you know and barge into them then you know I don’t see it as a problem.
20:20 I think I heard you make a quote or said something on an interview and you said that you know hip-hop music and a lot of pop music it ultimately is about the artist you know especially in hip-hop a lot of times where you know it’s it’s how great the artist is and the artist by promoting themselves they promote their music and I don’t know if you were necessarily a big fan of that of that type of promoting yourself in that music musical way I mean how how does that differ from say what you guys do and how do you think a musician should should address themselves in their music that’s interesting I actually do touch a bit on this in my speech tonight but like how um yeah sort of a lot of popular music and like you say mainstream rap I mean I’m a massive fan of underground hip-hop, but sort of mainstream rap music is very narcissistic and it’s just, it is, they sort of look forward to be putting on that, to be put on that pedestal, you know. Yeah, Jay-Z kills me. Jay-Z, I’ve never actually never been a big Jay-Z fan, I’ve always been like an Ice-T fan and an Ice Cube fan from the old days, but you know Jay, all I remember Jay-Z’s songs is him telling me how great he is, that’s all I remember him saying, and I’m like, dude, you need to earn that before you start telling me that.
21:28 But then again, it seems to work, but you were saying. Yeah, no, it’s sad. I mean, you can listen to that type of music and you’ve basically got this person talking at you telling how many bitches they’ve got, how much money they make. And it’s just like, yeah, I don’t understand why anyone would want to hear that. It’s just musical soundtrack to bragging, basically.
21:48 It’s just not very artistic, I guess. I guess it’s a new phenomenon, right? I mean, that wasn’t happening 50 years ago, was it? No what I mean even like that’s I mean most people who aren’t into hip-hop that’s immediately what they sort of think it is like rap music oh that’s just you know all that narcissistic nonsense but hip-hop certainly didn’t start off like that I mean I don’t know much about that genre but from what I know it didn’t and certainly the underground or real hip-hop I think it’s still very alive, like a lot of UK hip-hop scene is, you know, you’ve got people like Loki, Mike Righteous, Akala, they’re all really talking about like, it’s social commentary basically, it’s meaningful.
22:33 And again, it’s same with punk, you know how they call it spitting, you know, you’re like rapping, you’re quite vehement in your lyrical delivery. And so you want that to have some sort of foundation. You want your lyrics to mean something. I don’t know how you can vehemently deliver a lyric if it’s just bragging, unless you really are an egotistical twat. I guess punk was always anti-establishment, right?
23:04 And so there really was about the message and not about the musicians. So what will you be talking about? It’s called defending music’s social value. I can’t infer anything from what I mean. It’s kind of cool. What will you be talking about? And why give that speech to the Zeitgeist people tonight?
23:24 Well, I kind of split it up into two sections. I talk about how powerful music is as an art form. It’s kind of the only thing that throughout time, I’m talking real time here, like way back to sort of the Paleolithic times is that’s brought people together. It’s a tool of unity so I talk a bit about that sort of the evidence for that and a bit of the almost the neuroscience behind that like why music sort of makes us feel communal and is best in communal spaces. Why does it?
24:05 We can’t spoil your talk because you’re gonna give your talk before this goes out. That’s fine, I mean, it’s a good practice, I suppose. I guess one sort of quite clear example is, so the brain chemical oxytocin, it’s like dubbed the love hormone or the bonding hormone. There’s a great TED video actually about it. I can’t remember who it was now, but if you just type oxytocin into TED, and it’s released in this most simplest of acts, like if you just hug someone, you’re gonna release the oxytocin, this very tangible bonding feeling.
24:42 And it’s also released in like orgasm, it’s also released just loads of social and maternal behaviors. And that’s also released when you sing with someone. So it’s just one other person, if you just open your mouth and you sing with them or a group, that’s immediately just the most sort of primitive style of music, just using your vocal chords like in harmony or at least in some sort of rhythm, you’re gonna release that brain chemical. So you’re gonna create a very real bond with those people, a chemical bond with those people, if you like.
25:19 So yeah, I guess that’s one of the reasons. And like I say, throughout history, I think that’s kind of the main purpose of music, I think, to bring people together, to remind us of our shared fate. So yeah, that’s what I talk about in the first half And I was in Los Angeles like a year ago, and I was staying in Venice Beach, and I was listening to a lot of The Doors when I was out there, and I was just listening to Morrison all the time. And I had this sudden realization, which I’m sure you’ve thought of before, and I was like, you know, the original internet was like music, because like, talk about how can you virally spread a message across the world?
25:55 And it’s like, well, make a song by The Doors, make the end or break on through or something. And then now people are singing it, and then there’s a message, and it just spreads like wildfire. Absolutely yeah I mean I guess with again in the talk I make sort of some ties between art and science and with science you can obviously be very descriptive very detailed about all sorts of things all sorts of messages but with art it really is open to anyone anyone can immediately be touched by by the music and that sort of kind of brings them in to perhaps the message It’s just definitely what happened to us, as I said, being around all those types of influential music that we listened to that sort of helped us in our direction.
26:44 What percentage of your audience do you think knows your lyrics and what percentage just likes the music? Because sometimes when I listen to hip-hop, sometimes it takes me a year or two until I finally catch the exact lyric and I appreciate it more. Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah, it’s an interesting one.
27:00 We try and make it quite clear that primarily we just want to make music that hopefully gives people some enjoyment in their lives, it gives them some colour so they can use it as a tool just for enjoyment. And then secondly, if they want to make the effort to dig in and to understand then that’s I guess just beneficial really. Do you think that’s a mistake some artists make because they try to push the message too much? But then I don’t even know because like you’re saying with the hip-hop like not sort of perhaps recognising exactly what they’re talking about straight away like one of my favourite bands that stuck with me from very early Rage Against the Machine and I didn’t have a clue what they were going on about and of course Zach’s lyrics are like incredibly like detailed like heavy politics like and I think just again just his his attitude his his energy his passion for what he was talking about it I guess it transcended the actual meaning I knew he was speaking about something that meant a lot to him and there’s something that was important and that sort of is what dragged me in so even if you’re making music that is very obviously sort of political if you like I don’t yeah I don’t sometimes you get you no one will even know like for instance yeah I didn’t I didn’t realize or was the message subconscious on you do you think it was with you for a while maybe yeah you’re like fuck that politician and then you’re like
28:39 Wait a second yeah listening to all this right and um what about your your own message is that something that’s changed over the last 10 years um or is it something that’s fairly been fairly consistent and is it something that you guys all sit down and then you’re like you know this is something we want to address or how does that work with you guys? It’s usually quite organic I hate using that word cliche but it is usually you know we’ll literally we’ll see something that happens in the world and we’ll be enthused to write something you know about that it’s not like I don’t feel like oh I see something that angers me like oh I’m gonna do something about this I’m gonna sit down and write a song I know I’m not you know I’m not changing the world by writing a song but like I think just creating awareness to things just making sure that music is it’s not just like we’re saying full of this kind of soulless brainless you know lyrics and things I think that that’s That’s our kind of one sort of main mission statement as a band to kind of redress that imbalance I think that’s kind of faded because popular music used to be full of like social commentary and you know like what 60s 70s yeah I mean from like John Lennon Bob Marley Bob Dylan you know that they’re all you don’t get any bigger than that these were the the pinnacle of like fame within music and they were talking about real you know tangible things
30:12 Important things and now it’s hard hard to find people at that height at least that are addressing key issues now we’re nowhere near that height but we i think we still are able to do our small our small little chisel at the uh the imbalance you know i can’t if i was a musician i i don’t know how I could get up every day and look myself in the mirror unless my music had like a message because it would just seem like what am I doing otherwise so is that I mean I guess that’s not a choice you’re making no well yeah you know we get asked a lot about like why how can I get into music and how can I be a songwriter and things and we usually say it’s it shouldn’t be a choice you do it because you literally have to do it you have the sort of urge to get these things out there and this can again this transcends into any sort of writing or any way of amplifying or broadcasting view so yeah I think it has to be you have to have that urge to to create and to say something you must get asked all the time how how do people get in the music business is that a red flag right there when someone has to ask you how they get in the business does that mean that they’re they’re obviously not actually doing or trying yeah I guess that immediately just by using that that phrase they think of it as a they’re thinking of it as a business so yeah it’s a kind of a shooting yourself in the foot straight away really like by using that phrase
31:43 Yeah I think so like the the the urge has to be simply to create for it did the motivation has to be intrinsic the joy of the task has to be the reason to create sort of honest, truthful art. Is that because the people see through a real message or not a real message? Or is that because if you don’t have that kind of dedication, you’ll never go anywhere?
32:07 I think people are sort of wise enough nowadays to sort of see three things. I mean, Bono, for instance, he’s like the most ridiculed, you know, sort of social, can you call him an activist? I don’t know. So people are starting to see through like the bullshit. Are you a Bono fan or not?
32:25 I do love U2’s music, but yeah, I don’t like Bonnie. I can’t stand him. Yeah, exactly. But he can wear the glasses. I’m not gonna put his glasses in.
32:35 No, I can’t stand the glasses again. But sorry, so you were saying people will see through, well, cause these days, I mean, every musician has to be an activist to a certain extent, right, it’s part of the shtick, isn’t it? I think so, yeah. Well, at the same time, you know, because music is one of the one things that still, you know, festivals, shows, gigs, they bring us together just to celebrate life and how you can be emotionally touched by an art form.
33:05 That’s some of, music is one of the only things that achieves that throughout the world nowadays. So I think there is something to be said for music, even if it doesn’t have like a overt social message, Like, as long as it’s not sort of an anti-social message, then it’s still gonna be bringing people together. It’s still gonna be doing something positive, I think. I mean, for example, Sigur Ross, like the guy sings in his own made-up language. So you can’t really take anything from his lyrics, but you know, you still walk away feeling like enlightened and sort of stimulated by what he’s, or what that band is playing, I think.
33:51 So there’s still something to be said for, just art for art’s sake, as long as it’s done honestly and isn’t just done for Wonga. Okay, and what’s the fine line between antisocial music? What’s an example? I don’t wanna get you in trouble, but. I don’t know.
34:09 Because I’m sure some parents would call some of your music antisocial. Yeah, I guess, again, that just, That’s like always just makes me think back to the council. They just don’t get it. Yeah, obviously they’re not looking hard enough. I think as a parent, you know, the kind of the pressures on you to sort of be finding out what your kid is into.
34:31 And I think you should make sure you do know exactly what they’re sort of listening to. Cause if you just sort of look at something, oh, what’s going on over there? I don’t understand that. I’m not sure whether you should be doing that. It’s just gonna create a disconnect between the parent and the kid, I suppose.
34:49 Yeah, fair enough. What’s your history with the Zeitgeist Movement and do you consider yourself a member of, do your fans ask you questions about the movement? Yeah, yeah, certainly. I know a lot of people have got into the Zeitgeist Movement because we sort of promote it, I guess, in sort of small ways, and vice versa. I know a lot of people have become interested in our music because through the Zeitgeist movement, because social commentary in music that is of some level, we’re a band that’s able to tour the world, for instance, crazily.
35:26 So, yeah, but whether I’m a member, I guess it doesn’t really have a membership, does it? Or a leadership. Yeah, exactly. It’s a very unique organization. Yeah, I think I just look at it like a portal for information really. It brings like the sort of the newsletters and things the the um is it designnews.org where they have basically all the latest uh sort of technological advancements and sort of ideas within um sort of social ideas of how we can change and progress as a society. How would you sum up the Zeitgeist movement? I know it’s kind of big, but if you had, if I was a new fan, if I was a new, you know, a fan of yours and I was like, oh yeah, I heard you mentioned the Zeitgeist, what is it? And you had to tell me in 60 seconds, what would you tell me? It’s, yeah, I think just, certainly what I use it for is a portal for information, for knowledge, because I think that the media isn’t doing, well mainstream media at least isn’t doing the best jobs of creating perspective.
36:37 You know, because obviously people every day, we all have our own jobs, our own worries, our lives are hectic, just looking after ourselves and our family and friends. So very rarely do people think about the big picture, which is detrimental because it’s the bigger picture that is affecting their lives and making their lives so hard and so hectic. And I think the Zeitgeist Movement does a really good job of giving people perspective and being able to lift you out of your hectic, stressful life and go, OK, look, this is what our system is doing. These are some of the things that we could go, the directions that we could take and you know so yeah it just it does it sort of helps where where perhaps media isn’t or yeah media isn’t doing its job I suppose and what are your some what are some of your like top three lists as far as things that that you like to change about the world right now or it comes to politics or or economics or my dad might dive in deep in there yeah I guess it’s The things that strike me I guess about our current like society and economic model is that it’s the kind of what Occupy was was going for the Occupy movement. Yeah I wanted to get your thoughts on that too. Yeah well it’s just like the whole thing is we live on one planet you know spaceship earth as Buckminster Fuller used to call it so we you know we do literally have one chance we’ve got this abundant earth, well abundant with resources, but they’re not infinite.
38:20 They are finite. They are going to run out. And at the moment, we’re not really addressing that. It’s still just business as usual. I guess climate change and energy companies is the best example of that. Because of the infrastructure and because companies kind of only care about short-term profit, they’re not thinking about the sort of destruction they’re doing, or maybe they are, they’re doing what they can, but they can’t do enough because of the mammoth infrastructure, and yeah, so it just becomes, you just get sort of stuck, I guess, in the sort of system that we have, yeah.
39:02 Okay, that’s good, and when it comes to, you know, political politics, like when you look at the UK, is there, the weird thing about the Zeitgeist is it’s looking for really almost like a 180 degree change and sometimes it’s hard to see how we’re going to get there. When Ben McLeish was here in the Zeitgeist movement, I said, Ben, what are three things I can do right now to get myself towards the Zeitgeist way of thinking and a lot of what he said was like, you know, do basics Brian, you know, shop local and buy local and do a lot of these basic things but it’s, I was just wondering what you think about like the current UK or US political system and what, you know, what you encourage people to do besides question things it’s tough like because there’s only so much you can do like the first protest no second protest I ever went on was the big one in 2003 before the war in Iraq right when it was it like millions over the world with processing and all the main cities is this before they right before the US went in and people know what’s gonna happen yeah I think so and yeah I mean I was I can’t I’m not even gonna attempt to try and work out how how old I was, but yeah, it was a long time ago.
40:08 Was this in London? Yeah. Okay. And that did nothing. So I think, well, what it did do is it sort of showed the government that they can’t just go in and expect the public to stay quiet.
40:24 They’re at least gonna have to control or quieten the public. So at least it kept them on their toes, so to speak. Yeah, and I think it showed them, as we’ve seen in retrospect, they are, they will ultimately be accountable for some of those decisions. Yeah, yeah. Not as accountable as they probably should be, but yeah.
40:44 So yeah, my mind’s… And do you think protest is something that you get involved in or you encourage people to get involved in? Yeah, I think if only for the community of it, if only to meet the people there and to keep yourself in touch and to keep yourself alive, you know, to at least to try and convince yourself that you are on the right side of history. You know, you’re not just sitting there going, this is all happening, the world’s going to shit, I’m not doing anything about it and I can’t do anything about it. I think there’s a certain sense of just sort of realness and happiness that you can get out of being within that community that is doing those again just kind of chiseling away at these big power structures and these big sort of horrible things that are happening but I think it’s still important because every once in a while there is a small victory and it wouldn’t have happened if no one cared or no one acted. So we spend a lot of time like going to like supporting Stop the War Coalition and their protests and then like Friends of the Earth and things regarding like climate change and yeah so I think yeah we try and still do a bit.
42:07 I want to ask you another question about this whole communal experience I mean you perform a lot at you know huge festivals in the US and concert halls and I guess you do see a lot of people really building bonds you know in a real time physical presence where I guess there’s no other what place that can happen and you said music goes way way back Like you said to paleolithic times to where I could be talking to you But if I’m singing with you the whole dynamic changes, right? I mean you’re a musician you must have thought about this a lot in your life. Why why is that?
42:36 You know, what is it with music and a beat and it’s singing that all of a sudden bonds us and And it doesn’t make us want to kill each other You ever thought about this? This is your future TED talk probably Yeah, this is, I mean, I find this incredibly interesting because there’s still a lot of disagreement which is obviously makes it more interesting about what about the I guess the evolutionary basis for music like where it came from, why it is so like powerful and you know, it sort of hacks the very emotive senses centers of our brain. I think so you’ve got one there’s kind of I guess there’s two like main arguments you’ve got Steven Pinker, I think the cognates has been sitting in that seat. Really? Oh, wow. Yeah, he’s fantastic. Yeah He could talk for like six hours. Yeah, and he just everything is organic and he just goes and goes but sorry You were saying about Steven. Yeah, yeah, so there’s his I think he’s perhaps a spearhead of I mean up again Now you’ve said you got him, I don’t want to put words into his mouth, but as far as I know, there’s one side of the argument that is the music kind of piggybacked its way into sort of human evolution.
43:55 It doesn’t serve a purpose, it’s not biologically relevant. We kind of invented language, a very slow process throughout the millennia, and music was sort of a by-product that just came with that. And then you have the other side, I read an amazing book recently by, come on, Raul, come on, Daniel Leviton. Okay. So that’s representing the more people who studied the music as opposed to language.
44:31 And I guess they’re sort of, you know, raising their flag and going, hold on a minute. And what they say, they go all the way back to Darwin, who didn’t say much about music, but what his views were is that it was all about sexual selection. So even sort of in the advent of language, when people were sort of, you know, grunting at each other and sort of things like that, music was, it was kind of, it was like the peacock’s tail. It was like, it was a show that you have these, you have sort of the intelligence, but the relative intelligence to what they had, to be able to sing and make rhythms and pitches.
45:14 It was showing off, basically, so it was to attract and mate. So that, and that’s, it seems to have some basis there, because that’s how the parts of the brain that sort of represent pitch and rhythm, how they became sort of entangled and intertwined with emotion. You know, the cerebellum right at the back of the head, which is where sort of rhythm is processed. That’s very well linked to the amygdala, which is right in the center. That’s like the emotional center of the brain.
45:46 And so that’s where they think that’s how that sort of came to be because of sexual selection. Wow. And the fact now that we can walk around with our eye devices and access, you know, all these different genres of music and pop them through our headphones at any moment in time, something we couldn’t do even 50 years ago, like does that ever bull your mind because usually people would have to go to a venue to aggregate, to listen to it in person. Do you think that’s changed music in a bad way, cheapened it at all? Because it doesn’t have to be de facto a community experience or they don’t have to get to watch you perform and you guys put all this emotion on stage that now it’s really disconnected to where it’s just in my ears.
46:26 Yeah or especially when you’re sitting on the bus and you’ve got the kids just using their mobile phones listening to music and it’s like this tinny horrible sound it’s just like do you know how much the artist spent on making that music sound perfect. Spoken like a true musician. So yeah that grinds my gears but yeah I don’t think it really diminishes the communal nature of music. I think there’ll always be something about live music that that can’t be replicated with a pair of headphones.
47:00 And that is the community experience, most of all, or is it also watching you guys perform? Well, for us, yeah, our music is very, the live side, that’s where the music really feels comfortable, I suppose, it’s home, it is live, it’s visceral, it’s intense. So, yeah, as I was saying earlier, to get the music, often people say they have to see it live. Our music. Yeah.
47:32 For people who haven’t seen Enter Shikara, you guys are pretty intense. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn’t say you yell a lot, but you’re raising your voice a lot. Yeah.
47:40 Yeah, certainly. I’m using the full dynamics that I’ve been… Do you ever burn your voice out? Does it go? Oh, absolutely.
47:47 Yeah. Have you learned how to hold it back a bit? Yeah. have to take care of yourself. I mean, for me, sleep is the most important thing, which is not great on tour when you’re going from trains to buses, trying to sleep on buses as they’re ricketing up and down. I’m not very good at that. The rest of my band can literally, they’d be able to fall asleep standing up probably, or at least sitting down, whereas I’m useless. I have to be in a quiet, laying down environment. So I’m not very good at sleeping and that really affects my vocals.
48:22 And when you tour in the States, I think you were telling me earlier, you’ll tour for like a month and you’ll do, you know, 28 days straight or something like that. Yeah, yeah. That’s crazy. The States is definitely the slog of all the places to tour. Is that because there’s so many places to perform and to do, to spend the capital to go there, you might as well do all of those.
48:42 Yeah, exactly. I mean, I guess with Australia, it’s only got, there’s a lot of just space. There’s nothing. So you do the main cities and pretty much you have to fly in Australia as well. So you can just get it done and head out.
48:58 But in America, yeah, if you wanna do a proper tour, you’ve gotta go there for two months, really. And you’ll hit what cities? You’ll just go all down the East Coast or all up the West Coast? Yep, up and down and up and down. Slowly make our way from coast to coast, yeah.
49:12 Although that would be the romantic view of it, but it’s not like that. You have your booking agent who makes you go from here to here, it just gets stupid, it’s just like. And it’s driving on tour buses, so you finish the gig and you get in the bus and you’re driving all night, is that kind of it? Yeah, usually again, depending on the tour, if we’re like, say, supporting another band, we’ll be in, say, a much smaller van, so we’ll do a bit of the driving, check into a motel, and then do the rest driving the day whereas if we’re on a if it’s our tour and we can afford to take a tour bus that we can actually sleep on then yeah well all the driving gets done overnight okay and you guys have released three albums or four albums three yeah we’re writing our fourth at the moment you’re right in the fourth um what’s what’s the music business like these days you’ve been in it for 11 years now yeah I mean I hear hip-hop artists complain about the music every every artist has their certain complaints about the business but how is it well Well we’ve kind of seen all the sides of it.
50:16 We started in 2003 and for the first few years it was so DIY, like it was punk. It was like booking your own shows, making friends with other musical communities up and down the country. You book a show for a band down there, like a gig swap, they book you one up there. Like in your local town, you get each other venues. Yeah, so you just build up your contacts, you’re booking it all yourself.
50:44 I was lucky enough to do music technology at uni, but I only managed a year because the band started taking off. But that helped us be able to record our own music. And then, you know, things like merch, we did that all ourselves, we’d have our t-shirts and this little, the first printing machine we had was this crappy print, I don’t know how we brought ourselves to sell it but I think like people just at that stage like because we were growing well we built up a substantial fan base quite quickly and just people like wanted to wear something which is amazing and just like bewildering for us you know the enthusiasm that we were getting so yeah it basically everything we were doing was was DIY and it was only until about maybe after three years of literally just maybe two years of going just up and down the UK and this little rickety old ex post office fan that you know mold on the seats broke down every two hours that that type of fan and yeah after after all that we’ve done all the sort of groundwork it was only then that labels died sniffing around and we take out the dinner okay guys seem to be doing pretty well for yourself and were you guys suspicious of initially yeah yeah we were very lucky to be able to meet a guy who’s now a part of our management team and he was able to sort of guide us and because of course we were excited the first label that came sniffing like this is this is a chance to actually release like have music in a store obviously this is when
52:23 H&V and like independent music stores are still relatively thriving right so that was like a big thing there was no online music at this point well there So this was just as MySpace was taking hold, which is great because that served as like this online base, like people would see us and then go, I can pick up this cheap CD from the show that we made, but where can I keep in touch with you guys on MySpace, in that respect. So yeah, we were able to sort of navigate our way through and we ended up just deciding, by that point we built up enough contacts and we just started our own label, released first album on that went really well. We were distributed throughout Europe through independent distributors and then second album we saw the other side of the coin we decided you know what let’s let’s take the dive and we went with Major and it wasn’t as horrible as like the horror stories that you hear but they had they do have their subtle ways of like say I mean one of the American dudes sort of would always be saying it when we sent him demos and like that’s great what about if you take this bit out and just add another chorus and then maybe take our guitars out of that bit and just keep it sort of fairly too simple they were just really trying to like dull us down okay and so immediately we felt very uncomfortable we obviously didn’t listen to a word what they were saying but yeah so there were things like that and I guess the
53:49 Whole bureaucracy of it as well if you want to get something done you’d have to go so many levels throughout the label just to do I don’t know a music video just to get like the funds for that so. But they were making a significant capital investment in you. Yeah yeah yeah. That paid off. Yeah well. Investing in what?
54:08 Studio time and tours. Yeah yeah so they just give you just a big sort of lump advance then you’d use their press people and things like that and the thing with majors as well they usually have so many bigger fish to fry us just being this alternative band you do get brushed aside and as I say just trying to get anything done just it just takes so much longer and we’re like you know we’re a band that’s in the creative process and we get very fidgety and like if we have an idea we want to put it out straight away and so it just didn’t work with us so we went back. And you signed a one album deal so you weren’t really tied down to that label. No yeah. But so in retrospect you’re glad you did it so you knew but then you just decided that you needed to be on your own label.
54:50 Yeah, I think it was good to see the other side, but I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s like some lovely people working at majors who do have their heart in their right place, they’re enthusiastic about music, but there’s, as I said, there’s so much bureaucracy involved, there’s so much, everything has to go upstairs to the, you know, the money department of the label to be, to even be planned, so it’s… Okay. Now for your third album, did you miss not having the money and the resources of that label when you came out with it? No. Is that because your fan base is really organic and really loyal to you? Yeah, we’re very lucky really that that sort of leg work that we did at the beginning, it really did build up that solid fan base that we’re into the music from day one and it just built from that. So we were lucky to have a fan base that has just stuck with us and grown throughout the years, that we didn’t need a lot of a lot of the way major’s market is it’s all sort of big in your face and it’s just you know it’s a bit just doesn’t work with our style of music I don’t like that I don’t want to see myself on advertisements and things like that it’s just you know if you get into a band that way it’s just it doesn’t feel right you know right okay I understand now now you’re in the creative process right now for the fourth album this is a weird place in a lot of careers of bands I I mean, like, where are you guys in your head?
56:18 Do you feel pressured to deliver something, to deliver something new, to stay true to the old values? Or are you guys just, are you just being yourselves and like coming up with whatever you feel like coming up with? Yeah, that’s the aim. Just the only pressure is coming from ourselves because we wanna put out another album as soon as possible. So yeah, we don’t have a label guy knocking on the door and go, come on, deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.
56:40 But we do have pressure from ourselves. And I think we’re at the moment at the stage where we’re just over the initial kind of tearing your hair out like mega nervous sort of stage where I always get this point every album I suddenly think like if we still got it like oh god I’ll be writing some things oh this is this is rubbish this is nowhere near as good oh my god we’ve lost it like because you only do this once every couple years yeah we have to go to the drawing board and be creative yeah exactly it’s a lot of pressure Yeah, I mean, we try and do sort of riffs and stuff on the road and keep a kind of back catalogue of stuff ready to go. And that, again, can add to the sort of the nervous jumble of your head because you’ve got all these, you know, riffs that you’ve literally hummed into mobile phones or voice recorders.
57:27 You’ve got, you know, dodgy guitar riffs that perhaps you’ve put down on just on your laptop here and there. And you just got this mess, basically. So that’s where we’ve just got over that. We’re sort of quite organized now. We’ve got, you know, all the riffs are listed by key and tempo and feel and stuff like that.
57:47 Yeah, when we get to that stage, it’s like, okay. Right, we’ve actually got a lot of good stuff to play with here. Right, we’ve actually got 40 sessions open at the moment. So that’s potentially 40 new tracks. Yeah, well, to be honest, most sessions have at least one or two ideas in them, or actual song structures within them.
58:07 So that’s going to be the hard thing, cutting it down to 10 or 12 tracks or whatever an album should be nowadays. And can you see yourselves getting older and getting more mature and finding different routes with your creativity, thinking, I wouldn’t have wrote this song four years ago? Yeah, I think so. I think lyrically, for sure, this album is going to be a lot more… Because our last album was so to the point, it really was quite frank over in its lyrics, in its messages.
58:45 This album, I think we’re going to go, it will still be, every song will have a very deep meaning. But I think I’ve been reading a lot more fiction and sort of getting more interested in more artistic stuff. So I think it’s going to be more interesting musically as well in that terms. It will be even breaking even more genre boundaries and, you know, hacking into all sorts of bits of the musical spectrum. And yeah, you know, we had we had Beardy Man in here a few months ago and he’s got his Beardy Trons that he uses.
59:19 And I watch one of your music videos. I think it was old one. Probably, you know, sorry, you’re not a winner from a long time ago. But you were you were you have similar devices, right, that you play with. Yeah, yeah, we’ve got all sorts of synthesizers and samplers and things, yeah.
59:33 And do you do, do you, because obviously he, he like sometimes improvises a lot of his tracks when he plays. I mean, do you, I mean, do you play around with that where you have like, you know, screens that you can just like press and get sounds that you’re feeling like in the studio is quite a great process. To a certain extent, because of the large scale of what a band is now in terms of its musicality, its instruments, it’s grown so much. It’s hard to be totally in the moment and we’re able to improvise live. So a lot of it is literally… We can play about it with a set and add different songs in once we’re doing a song like because of like the the sequences and stuff like that there’s not a lot we can do right yeah that makes sense that makes sense and and when you’re creating in the studio though then you can play around with whatever you want yeah yeah do you ever shock yourself by going in a genre direction that you wouldn’t expect like are we gonna get a country a country song from you i don’t think so no my dad actually loves country west he used to play that all the time in the car and i remember singing along to like Garth Brooks and stuff like that. But yeah, whether I actually put that in, you know what happens when you play a country song backwards? Well, you get your job back, your wife back and your dog. So, so you’re not, you’re not going to go into completely any, well, you guys cover most
1:01:05 Genres, don’t you? So, and every, every song will have a message, like a very serious message. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I mean sometimes it’s more specific about, yeah, something, but a lot of it as well is just the overriding sort of message of unity and perhaps using a different metaphor to get that across, for instance. Okay, talk to me about staying together as a band. You guys have the same four original members that you had 11 years ago. You guys seem pretty tight. You guys seem like kind of a crew like that movie heat that would like take down banks or something I just started checking you guys out but you seem like you guys would kind of have each other’s back like in a heist yeah yeah yeah I mean how do you stay together as a band and and cuz there’s four people changing so much over 11 years I mean it’s hard enough to keep a marriage together yeah let alone four people how do you do it I don’t know I mean we’re all pretty laid back guys like really we’d none of us have that many sort of requirements from life on the road so we’re able to you know if one of us is pissing the other off we’ll just retreat into our bunk you know a little safe area pull the curtains and just put some headphones on listen to music or whatever yeah so I think because we’re friends before the band as well like I went to school with our drummer on our basis, Rob and Chris, and then we met Rory, our guitarist, went about 16, 15, 16.
1:02:42 So there was a sort of a lifelong friendship there, I guess, when you get to that stage it literally is just like brothers, so any spats you have doesn’t matter. Have you ever come to a point where you’re like, okay, someone’s got to go? No. No? No.
1:02:58 It’s never gotten that bad. No, I don’t think so. We’re really lucky in that respect. I mean we’ve had to play tours without like our drummer Rob he’s had a lot of trouble with like getting into America visa issues and stuff like that but that it just it never felt right even though we were lucky enough to have like friends who played the drums so we got them in so it still felt like a tight unit I don’t think Enchikaro would be in Enchikaro if any one of us left like a lot of bands especially within like the metal scene will chop and change members whereas yeah I don’t know whether we’d survive okay what if you guys started your band today could could you have pulled it off again in a day like today where you know the music businesses you know there’s so much happening online and there’s so much competition could you guys recreated what you’ve what you’ve accomplished 11 years later yeah I mean it’s definitely a different environment I think something can be said for that just all tried and tested, you know, just getting out there, getting a shitty van and playing.
1:04:00 It’s like the movie you always see of all these bands. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. You tell me that’s how it actually works. Yeah, I think so, just, I mean, there’s a big amount of luck involved, like, there’s so many bands that we know who are way more talented than us, you know, that haven’t made it.
1:04:19 I think you just, you really just have to devote your life to making sure you’re playing music that’s interesting, that’s true, that’s honest and yeah, just put your heart and soul into it and hope that you get the luck with it because that is a big part of it. And you must get asked, you said you speak at university sometimes, I mean I’m sure you’ve been asked thousands of times, you know, how people get into the music business which obviously, don’t ever ask that question if you ever see Rowell out there, but what do you tell people to do I mean now you’ve got everything online you’ve got people and YouTube competing with you know the Justin Bieber’s of the world yeah do you what advice do you give them all we can say is just reiterate what what we did and in terms of the music make sure you’re not just copying your favorite band because certainly within our music scenes and I think within most music scenes, a lot of it is just carbon copies, just homogenized music, and I think it’s important to, I usually sort of have a bit of a rant about people that go around calling themselves say, a metalhead, like, I only listen to metal, or I’m a raver, I only listen to dance music, you know, everything else is just meh. I usually use the analogy of like desserts you know like I like chocolate cake but occasionally I like a lemon meringue you know like some ice cream or something and it’s the same with
1:05:46 Music but I think if you can dive into all different types of music even if you don’t understand it and like it first you will find yourself actually warming to it just like anything in life you know anything is interesting if you go into detail if you dissect it and really understand it. So I think that’s important, just making sure that you keep an open mind, you’re influenced by all sorts of types of music and art and then you will naturally create, construct something that is actually different and not just a carbon copy of something else that’s already come. Do you remember the reaction you got when you first, I mean, because you guys, well some of your jams start off very, you know, punk hardcore and then all of a sudden you throw in some dubstep or some trance and you know, you’re like, whoa, where do we go here?
1:06:39 Yeah. Is that something you guys did from the get go? And was it, did you get some bad reactions to that in the beginning? Like you said, from some of the hardcore metal fans. Yeah.
1:06:48 Certainly from the purists who are just like literally think with destroying, you know, music genre or something and just creating this horrible amalgamation of things that don’t work together. There’s a lot of people that still think that, but certainly in the beginning.
1:07:05 We always try to sort of do two things. One, do it in a sort of, not classy, but in a way that doesn’t feel like you’ve just shoe-horned this type of music in there. We try and blend it and make it sort of feel like the music is still one entity like it’s it’s it’s together it’s not just yeah different ingredients and you can easily tell the other bits and the other thing we try and do is it’s more of a romantic thing but try and pay respect to where we’ve got those influences from like try and uh try and know about those types of genres try and know where they came from what and what they mean and things like that.
1:07:50 So, hopefully then we’re not just, you know, raping like these people’s hallowed music genres and we come along and just, you know, take what we want from it and go, yeah, cheers, see ya. So, yeah, we try and be respectful in it. So, you kind of give a nod to the classics of that genre when you mix that. Yeah, yeah, try and understand it, I suppose. Okay, you quoted, I’m gonna hit you with a quote that you said, I think you had quoted Plato when you said something recently And you said, music is a more potent instrument than any other for education, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, something we were talking about recently.
1:08:29 And I think you quoted that when, I think there was a Christian band that had made some anti, some homophobic comments, and you really came out and blasted them, and you could tell that it really bothered you. I think that not only, I think in the article you wrote, that it wasn’t just some guy from the Christian right in the US. You’re like, this is a musician. This is a guy who, well I guess according to you, is dealing with a medium that is about uniting people.
1:08:53 And he was coming out and saying some things and it really bothered you. I was just wondering if you could just talk about that article and why it hit you so hard. Yeah, I mean things like that happened a few times. I think we’ve been, I’m lucky really, in terms of, I remember the first time something like that happened was where we played a show, I think it was in Nottingham in like 2005, 2006. And after our show, it was in a part of the town where there was quite a lot of music venues and people were leaving another show.
1:09:23 And I don’t know whether there was a band performing that represented these type of views or whether this was just people that had been to that place. I don’t know whether there was a venue involved. But there was this group of people who literally were, how do they describe, like Nazi punks basically. And they were running down the street shouting like horrific racist stuff. And we were just in utter disbelief.
1:09:49 And I think that, again, that’s the same, the same as what you’re talking about, what happened with this, this member of a band that we toured with in America. He, yeah, he basically just started using his social media, his pedestal for, yeah, just this antiquated drivel about homophobia. And there was a religious overtones to it all. Yeah, homosexuality is a sin, Jesus died for your sins, you know, all that crap. You obviously don’t take that message very seriously.
1:10:23 No, no. It probably, it amuses you, even, that it would happen in this day and age. It’s sad that that’s still, you know, someone can grow up in a world where we have a computer in front of us. So basically, we can educate ourselves with anything, and he still is able to grow up with that view. But then, you know, he’s probably indoctrinated by his parents and all that stuff.
1:10:43 The Bible Belt’s a crazy place. I haven’t even toured that probably as much as you have, you know, like that proper center, but it’s crazy, man. You know, you see those crosses on barns and it’s like a whole different kind, I guess a subculture, I guess. I guess religious extremism happens everywhere in the world, whether it’s in the hills of Afghanistan or in the Bible Belt of America. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
1:11:04 So you were saying, so he uses social media and you felt like you had to come out and say something about that? Yeah, so it’s not just the fact that he had these, these sort of just sick views, as I say, archaic. Yeah, it was the fact that he was, and again, the fact that Nazi punks were, as you say, this medium of music, the tool that is an instrument, it’s an instrument of unity, literally, because of its history, because of, again, because of the neuroscience involved in music, we know this.
1:11:36 And to be using your pedestal that you’ve created, because of your music, to spout this rubbish. It was just, yeah, it really great, it does. And thankfully, yeah, there’s the blog that I did and like loads of other people. There was a lot of written pressure. And yeah, he ended up quitting music.
1:11:57 And certainly I’ve never met a Nazi punk since that night. So I think all of that stuff is, it’s rare, thankfully. There is faith in the human race. So you have to, as a musician, you really have to take what you’re doing, you have to consider it a privilege and treat it with respect, the fact that you’re using this medium and recognise it as such. Yeah, I think, and again, with religion, we’re not like some anti-religious band, I respect the warmth and the meaning that people have behind faith, but when faith dictates something that’s just so obviously ridiculous now that you know humanity is we’ve overgrown we’ve outgrown these these these these views that you know shepherds from 3000 years ago wrote down you know we’re better than that so that that’s when it yeah it has to stop the bible’s interesting document you know someone said something recently i was listening to a podcast and the fact that it wasn’t written by a specific person in a weird way gives it this amazing power to certain people because it’s just it was written and then the fact that, you know, you can look at any verse and obviously attribute it to kind of whatever you want.
1:13:12 I don’t know. We’ve had a lot of discussions about religion on this show and if you tried to make up a religion like Mormonism or Christianity or Islam today and I came out and said, my name’s Brian and you’re going to do these things. People would think I was absolutely insane and I’m like, okay, this is what happened and this is what you’re going to do and you’re going going to do this, and you’re not going to eat this, and people would be like, are you kidding me?
1:13:34 Like, that’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard of, but obviously, since we’re kind of used to it, and it’s part of our history. Yeah, as well, I guess there’s the sort of miracles that were performed that made people think, oh, you know, back in these days that this guy is obviously, you know, sent from the gods. Like, you think the type of things that we can achieve now, you know, like, if they had known, like, they would have realized, yeah. a man to the moon. Yeah, it’s just funny like when you hear some of the stories from the Bible, I’m probably gonna get some hate for this, but like my nine-year-old, she’ll come home and they teach him some religious stuff at school and she’ll be like, oh yeah, yeah, Jesus did this. And sometimes I’m like, are you sure about that? Did you really? He’s like, you know, it’s almost like the, what is the phone call where you get 10 kids and you tell one person a story in their ear and they have to whisper it in the other ear. And someone comes out with some crazy thing that some guy did 2000 years ago and you’re like, are you sure he actually walked in the water like you sure so anyways we do that ten years from now where is enter Shikari and what are you doing with yourself 2024 you’re gonna be talking at Z day or what do you think what do you hope to be doing then well I’d like to think that the band would still be together at least in some capacity I mean just by the nature of our music I think there is a kind of a
1:14:54 Are used by date on our band because it is so sort of energetic and the live experience is so much such a part of the music so you know at some point you know for instance we were talked a lot about Jack Fresco earlier I couldn’t be doing the same thing when I’m 98 right as Jack can do that yeah so I don’t know maybe I’d like to think I’d still be doing something musical but you’ll be in your 40s then maybe or your late 30s yeah yeah I then hopefully I don’t know where the back would still be with it I’ve already got some some niggling things wrong with my body so I don’t know how long I’m gonna be in one shape all right so you won’t be the Stones you won’t be performing in your 70s you don’t know I can do that okay all right I respect them and you know they’re able to pump themselves full of whatever drugs that enables them to do it but yeah I couldn’t do that and but wait and will you be in the music business or not necessarily you personally I don’t know I mean I’d love I’ve always loved the thought of going back to university and doing something more scientific but you know it’s a lot of money it’s a lot of time so I don’t know whether that dream will ever ever come real so and I think I couldn’t drag myself away from music as well I’d have to have some sort of musical outlet. So yeah. Do you, uh, do you, uh, is performing something that you need to like, to, to live?
1:16:19 Is that outlet really important for you? It’s such a different personality than you are. Yeah. Well, this is what I was going to say. Maybe not the performance, like, because I mean, I, I’ve, I’ll still get like not nervous, but I’ll still have a points in, in a show while I’ll be, while we thinking like, what, what am I doing? This isn’t who I am.
1:16:37 Like I’m not, I’m, I’m actually quite like a shy, sort of diffident like person like so occasionally it’ll hit me like Jesus man look at all these people looking at you and I’ll be like really just want to retire to the to you know my cat and the book or something because you’re not shy on stage no no well yeah you just I guess the music takes you but um yeah so so you’re saying that you don’t think it’s important for you to perform and get that out no the creative outlet creative outlet yeah as long as I’m writing music like that. That’s what I think I enjoy the most, just sitting down and being able to wake up, maybe getting an idea in my head or on a guitar or something or whatever, and just being able to follow that idea. That’s something that I treasure. Okay, so that’s the important part, you think?
1:17:26 Yeah. Because I remember Madonna said, not to compare with Madonna, but she said that she was exercising her demons when she was out on stage. A part of her needed to get out there and do all that stuff. Otherwise, she couldn’t just be normal. You don’t think that’s the case with you?
1:17:41 I don’t think so, but I’ve never had, I don’t think I’ve ever had a substantial amount of time off tour to sort of feel like I’m missing that part of my life. Right. So maybe, yeah. That’s pretty much answering your question. Raoul, I always ask everyone who sits here a question at the end of the show, and I’m going to ask you the same. If you could make a phone call to the 20-year-olds, Raoul Reynolds, and give that young man a bit of advice. What would you tell them? I guess it’s difficult to think of something that’s gonna appeal to most people. I could tell myself things like don’t worry so much and don’t be such a hypochondriac. I think that would that would help me. It’s gonna be okay. Were you a big warrior? Were you like yeah about your own success? I guess to a certain extent everything like again was just like a bit of a ball of sort of nervous energy and not good at meeting people, worried a lot about yeah as I say about sort of my own ailments like oh am I getting this am I getting that and a bit sort of I wasn’t I don’t think I was selfish hopefully not but yeah I guess I was I was very caught up in my own worries and uh maybe maybe just to sort of just tell myself look it’s going to be okay. Relax, take a deep breath and maybe meditate, you know, start that off young that would probably help you out. Do you do that now? I’m trying, I’m trying to get into it, I do find it hard but I think it’s finding the right teaching and resources I think.
1:19:19 Yeah, it’s hard to do, it’s hard to keep up. What I’ve been doing lately is I wake up in the morning and I brush my teeth and then I go right back into bed and I sit up at the end of the bed and and I do my 20, 25 or 30 minutes of meditation then. So like I just, it’s part of my whole process in the morning and that’s when I find I make sure I get it done. And I think meditation’s weird, I think it’s something that if you do it for a month or so it gets you in a really good state where you can control your brain more than you think you can but if you stop doing it, you might not miss it right away but then you’ll find it, you know, you’re making more impulsive decisions or you’re doing this kind of thing.
1:19:54 So it’s weird, I read a book one time and someone described you being the control of your body is like a rider on an elephant, you know, and you can kind of like tell the elephant to go left and right and slow down. But if elephant really wants to go, you know, eat, eat the tree, then it’s going to go. So like, and so what meditation does is allows you just to be a little more in control of that elephant, you know, of your physical, you know, animal self by doing that. So anyways, I wish you luck with that. The second part of that advice question is what’s the best advice you’ve ever received? As a person or as a musician. I mean there’s so much questions that involve specific memories. I’m rubbish. What about what’s some of the good advice you’ve gotten over the years? Did the label actually end up giving you any good advice or did you learn something from them when it came to the business or touring? Yeah I mean as I say we learned a lot about the business in terms of it taught us a lot about ourselves and our way of creating and I think the only way of creating it has to be you have to be absorbed in it and if you want to go down some route you’ve got to be free to be able to go to go down that route you can’t be sort of restricted by some sort of hierarchy or bureaucracy or something so do you think the fact that they give you some notes on some of your songs do you think that in a weird way changed the
1:21:19 Song. It’s where you probably made it even more so. Oh, I bet it did. It did, right. So even when you measure the environment, you tamper with it a bit. Yeah, the old punk mindset will come in, is he trying to tell me what to do, right? I’m gonna do the opposite. So you’re happy being independent. Yeah, absolutely.
1:21:38 Okay, the last part of that question you might have already answered is, is to the 20 year old listening to us who could be in China or Australia or South America, like what advice do you give to them in general? Maybe not if they just want to be a musician but what advice do you give to them I think yeah actually I guess this this also is gonna be useful for the last question just the best advice it’s finally came to me I think to be interdisciplinary I think that is probably the most important thing somebody can do as in as in a personal thing for yourself and for the world I think the more interaction between different areas of society and of education and just of everything really. The more we interact, the more we know about different things, the more we’ll see the connections, the more ways we’ll bring people together. So I think that’s a good one.
1:22:37 I think as well for your personal health it’s good to just be interested in lots of things, hobbies and I think it keeps you keeps you keeps the zest for life going you know it keeps keeps you enthusiastic so don’t stick to one form of music mix that up yes up all your ideas yeah obvious your practices that kind of thing I think so it’s a good advice and these days with the web you know it’s you don’t have many excuses right yeah exactly everything’s there at your fingertips it’s weird because a lot of the people that listen to this show especially when we first started doing it like the first six months in they they would be like you know we get messages and they’re like I live in a small town in Georgia and he’s like and no one is having the conversations in my town about what you guys are talking about you know we were talking about who knows ayahuasca or something like this and they’re like you know it’s great because I can listen to people having conversations that I’d like to have because they can’t find it locally so um yeah there’s no excuse these days yeah there’s so much stuff out there um how do people get a hold of you uh you’re a twitter guy right yeah yeah I guess How do people follow you or follow the band and how can they stay in touch with what you guys are doing?
1:23:44 Well, if they don’t want to be engulfed in me making stupid faces, maybe don’t follow my Twitter. That’s just… What are you? At Raoul Reynolds? Yeah.
1:23:54 Okay. At Raoul Reynolds. Yeah, I mean, our band is just nshikari.com. I mean, we’re on Instagram, Twitter, all of them. And when should we expect the album out and are you going to tour on the back of that and the other million dollar questions?
1:24:12 No pressure. I don’t know. Yeah, we try we want to try and have The album recorded. We’re looking at May to do the actual recording. So we’re still in the demo stages at the moment So then if that goes well, maybe we’ll be looking at somewhere at the end of the year beginning of next year for the release piece. Because I think again with this album we’re going to really push ourselves production wise as well. We’re going to be so anal about every sound. We’re going to concentrate on the texture of the music a lot. So yeah, it’s going to be a long process.
1:24:45 Is that because you found that lacking in the past? Do you listen to all tracks where you wish you would have spent more time? Yeah especially on the first two albums but I think it’s more just that I’m even more interested in it now and I mean melody and meaning and things like that I think to a certain extent we’ve we were a hold of it we’re in a good position where we can create good melodies and we have a certain amount of confidence in ourselves but the texture is I guess with the growth of technology and just how amazing we can make a musical landscape a soundscape sound I think that’s really interesting us, so we’re really going to concentrate on bringing our A-game to the textures.
1:25:30 Awesome. Where will you cut that album? Right, in London? No, in Lincolnshire. We’re going this time.
1:25:35 Okay. We’ve done each album at a different place. The last album we did in Thailand, in the middle of like, I think it was just between summer and monsoon season, and now we’re going to be spending it in Lincolnshire. So it’s a big difference, but I love the studio that we’ve found. It’s literally just in the middle of a woodland, nice little quaint British village.
1:26:01 That’s kind of the thing you read about, like the old stones or whatever would cut these things. And what are you, just book a couple weeks there? Yeah, yeah, we’re going to book a month and do all the recording there and then work on the mixing for what could be a few months. Wow, that’s exciting. Raul, thanks so much for coming by and talking to us.
1:26:22 Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. Good luck tonight at the Z-Day. I’m sure it’s going to go smooth. It’s a very interesting topic, you know, and it’s weird because like I was saying earlier how music was the original internet for spreading the message, and in a weird way with the internet I think we always assume that that’s the way to spread the message, but maybe in fact music is the right way, you know, or is a way that we don’t think about as much, you know.
1:26:45 Yeah, definitely a strong way, I think. it’s like those lyrics you were saying about raging on some machine. I mean they were inside of you for so long before maybe you realized what you were saying, but they probably affected your behavior in a lot of different ways. I would think so. Yeah, you’re infecting our minds.
1:27:01 Anyways, follow these guys on Twitter and I’m going to be listening to a lot more of your music. I apologize for not knowing about it before, but yeah, it’s awesome stuff. I love the fact that you guys have a message and you’re really congruent with that.
