Music
For over 20 years now, rock-rave outfit Enter Shikari have continued to dazzle us with their fierce energy and unique, genre-bending sound. Yet, even after all this time, they’ve found a way to surprise us all once again. Their eighth studio album ‘Lose Your Self’ has today arrived completely unannounced, ready to blow the minds of their fanbase while encouraging them to abandon their phones, ditch their egos, connect with one another and get back to nature.
Explaining how this surprise new record came together, we caught up with the band’s frontman, songwriter and producer, Rou Reynolds…
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“You’re suspended in a light beam – to transcend it, you’ve got to lose your self.” These are the words spoken by Rou on the album’s urgent opening title track, capturing the central theme of the new record, which is the idea that humanity is being sucked into a powerful lie of disconnection from the natural world by a warped, man-made digital realm. It’s a message inspired by a quote from American Astronomer Carl Sagan – “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” – but with Shikari putting their own dystopian spin on it.
“I think with this album, we’re really addressing the listener as an individual” Rou explains. “It’s another criticism of modern individualism. We’ve gone so far in the direction of division, separation and atomisation, that’s it’s become so painstakingly clear that is not a natural way to structure a human society and expect that it’s going to bring good things. Lose yourself – obviously it’s a phrase that normally just means let your hair down and go crazy. Whereas if you split it into three words, it’s lose your sense of self, lose your ego… lose that grip that society has over our minds.”
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To reaffirm this message, Rou went to great lengths for the album artwork. Wanting to represent the helplessness in a literal sense, he volunteered to be hung upside down in the Lincolnshire countryside last December. There, he was left flailing from a crane while his team got the perfect shot of him suspended in the illuminated woodland. It turns out this artwork is also a good metaphor for the album’s creation process, which Rou admits left him feeling a bit overwhelmed at times.
“It’s been quite a long and often arduous process – we’ve probably been working on it (the album) for more than two years” he candidly reveals. “We never did the romantic thing of going away to a cottage for a few months, recording the bulk of the album and then just applying finishing touches. It was this disjointed affair where we recorded it on tour, in all sorts of different studios and at our houses. But once things start coming together, it all sort of falls into place. I’m just glad we didn’t rush it or abandon things, we just stuck at it… and we’d never release anything that we weren’t certain was the best thing we’ve ever released.”
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One big pain point for Rou in particular during the making of this record was his role as sole producer, with ‘Lose Your Self’ being the third album in a row where he alone has taken the helm. While it means he has full creative control on bringing the band’s vision to life, the process often takes a severe toll on his mental and physical wellbeing.
“I’ve sort of realised through my own personal experience that my perfectionism is a clinical problem” he says honestly. “I always thought I could spot it and shake it off, but the last month of finishing this record was just stupid. I was working all day, and then our mixing engineer is in New Zealand, so he was coming online at about midnight and I’d then do three hours or so with him. Then our mastering engineer was in Nashville… so I was basically just not sleeping for a month. It gave me a lot of burnout, to the point that I literally haven’t touched the record since we finished it.”
Looking for a way to leave the exhausting creative process behind and get excited again about sharing the project with their devoted legion of fans, the band started coming up with different plans and ideas for the release. Eventually they landed on the idea to present their music in a way they had never done before and that was to surprise release the record – that meant no singles, no announcement, no teasers, no prior fanfare of any kind. Buoyed by the success of their last record ‘A Kiss For The Whole World’ reaching No.1 on the UK Album Chart, and therefore freeing them of any big commercial pressures, the band decided to take the plunge.
“We were set on the idea that we wanted to do something different for us, something a bit novel” Rou explains on the decision. “This album is such a united whole and one entity, it just makes sense to release it in this way. Usually there’s always been a few singles, a lead up where you drip feed information about an album over six months. Then when it finally comes out – if people are anything like me – you skip the singles because you’ve already heard them. It’s rare the album is ever listened to as we envisaged. So, it was like, well, what’s best for the art? This felt like the most natural and exciting thing to do. And because I’ve been so distanced from it for three months or so now, it feels just as thrilling for me as it will be for the audience.”
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‘Lose Your Self’ has clearly been a labour of love for Enter Shikari, but the often frustrating and difficult road during the making of this project already feels worth it given the end result. Not only is the album one of their most accomplished and fully realised to date, but the surprise release means their fanbase will come together as a community, to share in the joy of discovering its existence and listening to it as one. Given the album’s central subject matter, this feels perfectly fitting.
“We’re self-interested – we’re disconnected from each other, and we’re disconnected from the natural world. I think that is the core philosophical problem with modern society” Rou says passionately, expanding on the album’s key take away message. “I think normally we’ve done these broad strokes, speaking to the globe – but here, I think we’re trying to get through to the person. Remind them to shed that armour that says you should be this tough, solo warrior in life and that actually, the natural thing for our species is to value human connection more than anything else.”
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‘Lose Your Self’ by Enter Shikari is out now and you can catch the band on their UK arena tour later this year.
Words: Karl Blakesley
Photography: Kate Hook
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