On Tour with Enter Shikari: The Spark in Europe (+ Interview)

The Spark Tour: An Interview with Rob and Rou

How has the tour been so far?

Rob: It’s been good. It’s been really good. Yeah, the audience has been always a lot of fun no matter what size they are, how many people there are, there’s always a lot of energy in the room and excitement and intensity. The shows have been going really well. At the beginning of any tour there’s always a few problems, but that went ages ago, so now we are on a good steady run, where the set flows nicely and everyone seems to go home happy at the end of it.

Yeah, I thought Amsterdam was pretty epic, I mean, that was like one of the best shows I’ve been to, I think.

Rou: It was so packed though. I feel like I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if I was in the crowd.

Yeah, I was up on the balcony.

Rou: In safety. 

Yes, in safety. But I was scared that I would fall down because there was not enough space to move. I was dancing a lot and I was always holding onto the barrier, because I was worried that I would get too caught up in the dancing and fall down. 

Rob: Well, we’re glad that that didn’t happen! 

Rou: You would have had a soft landing at least.

So your schedule this week was really crazy. You’ve been from one show to the other, from Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Berlin, Paris, now you’re here in Cologne. 

Rob: Well, we were going to have a day off, but then this Berlin live show happened very last minute and that was going to be our day off, so we’ve had a run of 5 shows. It isn’t too bad. We were talking to our lighting guy who said he once did a tour with a Blues guy who did 28 days in a row, because he didn’t like days off, so he did just the whole thing. An entire month. That would be killer. I don’t know how we’d get through that. 

Oh wow! 

Rou: Being in a blues band he’d probably get away with just [shows unmotivated guitar playing].

Rob [laughing]: Yeah, he’s sitting down the whole time, isn’t he?

But his crew is the one suffering, right?

Rob and Rou: Yeah!

So, your production for the tour is absolutely breathtaking.

Rou: Thank you.

I personally really love the circular screen, and of course you brought the quadrophonic sound back. Today it’s the first time in Europe I think?

Rob: Yeah, the room is big enough to hold it tonight, lucky enough, so I think most of the German ones are going to be in quadrophonic. Don’t quote me on that though [laughing].

Haha, we will totally do that!
Is there a band or artist who have inspired you when it comes to big tour productions, stage design, etc.?

Rou: Well, quadrophonic sound was basically influenced by seeing Roger Waters at Coachella about 10 years ago. We saw it and we were like “We’re gonna do that one day!” and we finally did!

Rob: Yeah, it’s amazing. We were standing in the audience watching and most of it was coming from out front. Then all of a sudden there was a saxophone solo that just came out from right next to us and we were like “Whoa, what the hell!”. That was pretty wild. So that was definitely a direct influence on that. As far as lighting production goes, we were lucky enough a while ago to tour with The Prodigy and we saw this moving rig they had going, and the huge wall of lights and everything. They put on an incredible show, so getting to not just play in front of that audience, but be able to watch them every night was really inspirational. That’s what we got to reach for. 

Stay tuned for the full interview which touches on the powerful tool of songwriting, mental health awareness, the chaos of video shootings and more! 

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