Enter Shikari 'Take to the Skies' album

Three quarters of the band that would eventually become Enter Shikari - those three quarters being Rou Reynolds (vocals / electronics), Rob Rolfe (drums) and Chris Batten (bass) – met in primary school. A few years later (2003, to be exact) they were joined by their fourth quarter – more commonly known as Rory Clewlow (guitar) – and actually did become the aforementioned ‘Enter Shikari’.

Unlike a majority of musicians in this day and age, Enter Shikari did NOT hang around telling people they were a band whilst really just kicking back and plotting elaborate scams to bring themselves to the attention of the country’s media.

Instead they made the oft-forgotten move of actually buying a van, going out, and hitting the road in search of action, adventure and getting some shows under their belts and miles under their wheels.

One man… his dog… the other bands… Enter Shikari still played the shows, developing what would become the unique ‘Enter Shikari sound’ along the way.

Ahh yes. Let us pause for a moment to ponder the ‘Enter Shikari sound’. Much has been made in the way of “its metal, but mixed with rave” type comments (someone even went so far as to dub it ‘trancecore’… whatever), but that seems to suggest two disparate genres welded clumsily together… which is exactly what you DON’T get from Enter Shikari. You don’t get to ride in a van to 500+ shows with an onboard soundtrack of the likes of Faithless, 36 Crazyfists, Comeback Kid and the Prodigy and not come out of it with the lines totally blurred. The simple truth of the matter is that the endorphin rush of a gurning nutjob with their hands in the lazers is exactly the same as that of the kid at a hardcore show windmilling like a maniac through the pit. If either of those experiences has even the slightest resonance with you, then you’ll understand why the Enter Shikari experience has captured the imagination of kids the length and bredth of the country and beyond.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves now.

Where were we? Oh yes… shows…

Aside from giving you the space to discover your own sound, the other upside of playing quite so many shows is that, assuming you’re actually any good, you stand a chance of picking up an actual audience of real human beings. Such was the case with Enter Shikari. By the end of 2005 / start of 2006, the band had found themselves in the position of being one of the key bands on Britain’s underground post-hardcore / screamo / whatever you wish to call it live ‘scene’ (as an aside, ‘the scene’ constitutes probably the most significant youth culture movement of the past decade, yet has remained a mystery to the bulk of the UK media / music industry.)
Anyway, yes. For most bands, reaching the top of the tree within your peer group is it… you press your face against the glass ceiling before starting the inevitable climb down as apathy sets in when fresher faces come along. But, as I’m sure you’re starting to become aware of by now gentle reader, Enter Shikari aren’t ‘most bands’.

A tent-roof-blow-offing set at 2006’s Download festival saw Enter Shikari smash their way clean through the glass ceiling and step the whole thing up a gear, playing to their largest crowd so far in a rammed-to-the-rafters Gibson / MySpace stage. Appearances at Leeds Festival, a sell out UK headlining tour, and the support slot at My Chemical Romance’s ‘Black Parade’ Hammersmith unveiling, helped spread the love even further.

Late August / early September 2006 brought the download only single ‘Mothership’, closely followed in October 2006 by the release of the debut Enter Shikari single proper, a double A-side of live favourites ‘Sorry, You’re Not A Winner’ and ‘OK, Time For Plan B’, which earned them much in the way of radio play, column inches and hours of screentime on the music channels.
The accompanying sell out tour included a date at London’s Mean Fiddler, which ended up selling out well in advance and was then upgraded to the 2000 capacity Astoria, which then also sold out in advance.
In ordinary circumstances, this would be the highlight so far of a biog such as this…but that’s not the Enter Shikari way. No, they had one more card to play before the year was out.

From around the time of Download the band had been vigorously pursued by A+R types from labels of every stripe… majors, indies, majors masquerading as indies… everyone had a pitch, a credit card to pay for dinner and a chequebook to wave. Yet despite offering Enter Shikari the earth, none of them could offer the band the one thing any sensible band in their position should want… the freedom to control their own destiny. And so it came to pass that Enter Shikari took the road less travelled and decided to go it alone. A deal was struck with UK independent distributor Vital and their sales and marketing dept, Integral. Enter Shikari would, for the foreseeable future, release all their music through their own label Ambush Reality, putting them in the quite unique position of owning the copyright to all their own recordings and having nobody to answer to but themselves.

Which feels like a convenient point in our tale at which to gather our thoughts, grab a cup of tea and find ourselves near as dammit in ‘the present’.
2007 kicked off with Enter Shikari’s first trip abroad (3 shows in Holland), the recording of a session for Zane Lowe (on the same day as Rou’s 21st birthday, fact fans), a trip to Tokyo and a handful of UK dates. In February, the band join Billy Talent and Alexisonfire for an arena tour of Germany before returning to the UK for a run of headline shows (which, incidentally, have pretty much all sold out at time of writing this on a mid-January afternoon. A second night at London’s Hammersmith Palais has been added due to demand and the Glasgow show upgraded to the legendary Barrowlands).

March brings with it the release of the second proper single ‘Anything Can Happen In The Next Half Hour…’ on Monday 5th (digital release two weeks earlier) which earned the band their first daytime Radio One play courtesy of Jo Whiley. It is followed two weeks later (19th March, to be exact) by Enter Shikari’s debut album, ‘Take To The Skies’.

‘Take To The Skies ’was produced by the band and recorded in two short weeks in Reading, Berkshire in the Autumn of 2006 and runs the gamut of genres… from punishing hardcore and intense metal riffing to euphoric trance (often within the same track. See ‘Return To Energiser’ as a prime example) by way of widescreen melodic pop (Jonny Sniper) and even an acoustic ‘ballad’ (of sorts).

Despite a lack of time and money, or a big name producer to tell them how to sound, Enter Shikari have managed to turn in potentially the most powerful, and yet uplifting, album you are likely to hear this year.

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Enter Shikari - Take to the Skies