How a Tom Morello attitude and madcap Kemper experimentation shaped Enter Shikari’s genre-smashing tech-forward guitar sound

On June 19, 2021, Enter Shikari headlined the Saturday night of Download’s 10,000-capacity Pilot Festival at Donington Park. After an excruciating 20-month battle with writer’s block, it was the catalytic event that reignited frontman and principal songwriter Rou Reynolds’ creative impulses, and which set the electro-rock four-piece barrelling forth on a trajectory towards their ecstatic new album A Kiss For The Whole World.

“The thrill of suddenly being able to write music again, which is something that’s been such a staple for me, made the music come out in quite an excited fashion,” says Rou, who seems perceptibly relieved and reinvigorated by having 12 new tracks to demonstrate his return to form. “It is all quite energised, a lot of it’s up-tempo and there’s a lot of positivity on this record because that’s naturally what I felt.”

Fittingly, the album’s title track opens with a literal fanfare of horns to herald the band’s triumph over creative adversity, before a deliciously overdriven guitar hook cuts in to really heat things up in typical Enter Shikari style. 

“The guitars are always quite central in developing a song and making it feel like it’s within the Shikari universe, because, obviously, the palette that we write with is rather broad,” explains Rou, who doesn’t typically play guitars in the band, but who does handle their production. Guitarist Rory Clewlow puts it this way: “With our electronics, we can go into so many different genres and so many different directions – but the guitar is the one sound that stays solid throughout.”

As the pair talk together about the making of their seventh studio record, as well as the genre-smashing magic that has defined the band since their 2007 debut Take To The Skies, Rory recalls where the original inspiration for their trademark rock-meets-electronic sound. 

“In the really early days when The Prodigy first came onto our radar, that was very influential,” he says. “They had a lot of those very cool rock guitar sounds with dance music.” 

But now, with the benefit of so much time spent making the “organic edge” of his guitar playing coexist with the band’s unholy synth sounds and beats pillaged from the world of EDM, he shrugs, “We know what works together and what doesn’t. I mean, we’ve been doing it for 15 years!”

“It’s just a sense of knowing your place,” adds Rou, before quickly clarifying to his bandmate that he doesn’t mean that “in a demeaning way.” Rather, he explains, it’s to do with cultivating a sense for how to pen guitar parts and dial in tones that interact with the electronic instrumentation in a way that’s sonically harmonious. 

“Guitar, for instance, traditionally takes up the same sort of frequency range as a lot of synths,” he notes. “And if you’re in a band that’s using other instrumentation or electronics, the traditional, ‘I’m the guitarist! I’m gonna rip out a guitar solo and everyone’s gonna fucking listen to me!’ approach doesn’t really work. 

“It’s more of a collaborative or orchestral thing. You have to think of yourself as being part of this sound that’s way bigger than you could make by yourself, or even than you could make within a traditional rock set-up.” 

Nodding in agreement, Rory can attest to having long since tamed a natural urge that exists in pretty much every young player who’s ever rocked up to a rehearsal room with other musicians, plugged in and turned up. 

“There’s a lot of temptation to fill everything and put a guitar in every section of the song,” he explains. “But I have definitely had to get used to being like, ‘No. We don’t need a guitar in this section. We need to hold back a guitar to make this section better or more dynamic.’” He laughs: “I’ve got used to playing songs where I play one riff and then nothing for two minutes!”

Even so, on A Kiss For The Whole World, Rory’s creativity shines as a kaleidoscopic celebration of the diverse array of sounds that can be extracted from the humble electric guitar, if you’re willing to get a little experimental in the process. 

“Tom Morello has always been a big influence,” he says. “The way he plays is amazing and everything, but it’s the attitude towards playing the guitar. I remember seeing a video years ago where he’s like, ‘Look, it’s just a bit of wood with some strings and some electronics. You can do whatever you want with it. You don’t have to play it in a certain way and it doesn’t have to make a guitar-y sound.’”

Rory recalls the time around the band’s 2009 album Common Dreads, when he took a “deep dive” into Morello’s work with Rage Against the Machine, and experimented with stacks of “weird pedals” – including one with a theremin-style proximity plate – to get the most out the noise making capabilities of his instrument.

Now, the same spirit of sonic invention remains, but Rory has forsaken his effects toy box in favour of a one-stop shop that caters for all his sonic needs. “I’ve got rid of all my pedals,” he reveals, “and on this album – although I did a lot of experimenting with different sounds – it was all within my Kemper.”

In particular, he notes “playing around with all the different wah settings,” and – perhaps – “having a bit too much fun,” in the process. “There’s about eight different wah pedals,” he enthuses. “Some of them are like Bitcrushers, some of them can make vocal-like changes of timbre and there’s a Formant Shift, which is one that I used loads for this album.” 

On new tracks such as Goldfish or Jailbreak, this tone-altering effect is deployed to spectacular ends. “I miss my pedals because they are literally just little toys,” he says wistfully. “But sometimes I like having some parameters to play within, and pedals can go on forever if you just keep buying them. The Kemper does so much, and honestly, stacking up different wah effects can give you some unique sounds that I’ve not heard from any pedal.” 

There are also plenty of occasions on A Kiss For the Whole World where Rory devised an array of synth-like guitar tones to help him blend – like a sonic chameleon – with the electronic landscape around him, while still maintaining the “natural human element” that a guitar can have, but a synth can’t. “It’s got sort of a more organic edge, which I always like,” he says. 

But, even for those with a keen ear, there are moments where it’s hard to differentiate between the two. Take, for example, (Pls) Set Me On Fire, where the main powerchord guitar riff is layered with a synth part playing the same notes in a very similar tonal space.

“They melt together and you don’t perceive them as two different things,” says Rou. “I love that kind of stuff! In a band like this, the most important thing is fitting in – and how you work, collaborate and meld with the other instrumentation.” He adds that when the guitars and synths collide, “You get really interesting tones, and together they sound like something that you’re not really sure what it is.” 

Interestingly, amid all their open-armed embraces of market-leading guitar technology, the band opted not to track the record in a purpose-built or even adequately equipped studio, and instead headed off-grid to a picturesque, solar-powered and slightly derelict farmhouse near the South coast that they’d found on Airbnb. “It was a really wholesome experience,” says Rory, who, with his three bandmates and an engineer, descended on the property for five whole weeks.

Here, the band set up a drum room in a crumbling barn, and made a live room, vocal booth and control room in the open-plan living space. They travelled light, taking only Rory’s Kemper and a Diezel VH4 for as far as amps were concerned – and the latter of which only got turned on once during the whole process. 

“We also used a lot of the Neural DSP Archetype: Nolly because it just sounds amazing,” adds Rory, before Rou – who handled the album’s production duties – expands upon on the recording set-up. “Pretty much everything we tracked was DI, Nolly and Kemper. So, we could always make the decision after, if we wanted to use one, none or manipulate the DI. There was a lot of freedom.” 

Prior to heading to their countryside retreat, the pair had demoed guitar parts at Rou’s home, using anything and everything from Gibson SGs to Fender’s new Acoustasonic models – and a handful of these early takes actually found their way into the final mixes. 

“We just use whatever’s around,” Rou says. “We’re not massively precious about anything. When you have an idea, you want to get it down immediately, so you just grab whatever’s there. That’s the kind of purity that we aim for, instead of the more anally retentive approach of being like, ‘Oh, we need these pickups, or this type of guitar.’”

Speaking of which, for the actual recording session, Rory brought with him a dependable old favourite. “I used a Tele for literally about 90 per cent of it, and it was the same Tele that I use live” – namely an American Ultra model with Ultra Noiseless pickups, which he’s also had retrofitted with an EverTune bridge. 

For the remaining 10 percent of the record, he used a Fender Stratocaster, and that was it. “It’s not very exciting,” he apologises. But, on the contrary, what is exciting, is the degree to which these de facto kings of the Fender catalogue have had their usually recognisable tones tweaked, twisted and Shikari-fied beyond recognition.

As Rou says: “You can, to a certain extent, get any sound from anything, especially once you get into the world of processing and post-production. I find that stuff super-exhilarating. Anything that’s slightly different or surprising, I find thrilling. So, when Rory’s cutting these strange sounds, I go into a fit of inspiration.” 

Again, all tonal roads lead back to the multitudinous possibilities of the Kemper, which Rory also uses live on stage, with the sizable benefit of being able to dial in those precisely calculated studio tones with total accuracy night after night. Rou distils their appeal: “It’s the avoidance of faff!” 

For Rory, there is no going back to the fiddly old way of doing things. “I remember watching a Biffy Clyro Rig Rundown thing,” he smiles. “The guitar tech had built the most amazing series of amps and pedals. It was a work of art, or a work of engineering genius in the way it was all interconnected and you could control it. But at the very end, he was like, ‘And in case none of this works, we’ve got a Kemper!’”

Rory adds with a laugh: “We’ve just cut out the middle man, really!”

• A Kiss For the Whole World is out now on So Recordings.