For those people that haven’t heard of Electric Enemy could you tell us a bit about the band, your story?
Electric Enemy launched just over 2 years ago now. We’re London-based, but come from all over the place: London, Switzerland, Italy, and even tropical Birmingham! We’re brought together by a shared love of music, and we place ‘the song’ over all else, constantly striving to explore new musical paths.
Who inspired you to get on stage and perform?
For me, personally, my favourite band ever are The Beatles, but in terms of wanting to actually get into a band and perform… probably Oasis! (even though we don’t sound an awful lot like them haha!) As a band, we all had the spark lit by different bands ranging from Black Sabbath, to Rush, to The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but the best thing is when you yourself as a band find your own ‘thing’.
Are there any particular artists or albums that inspired your sound?
There are a lot of artists in our creative mixing pot… the ones already mentioned in the previous question, but to add to that, we love: QOTSA, System Of A Down, Muse, The 1975, Rage Against The Machine, Nirvana, Wolfmother, and so so many more. I always find it hard to answer this question because the inspiration never ends, and can come from very unexpected places… Classical music plays a huge part in our sound, but from first listen, it would be impossible to tell, the same with pop music, hip hop, and other genres.
Do you have any songwriting rituals?
Apart from the blood sacrifice to Apollo? Not rituals necessarily, but what generally seems to happen is I’ll come up with a song on an acoustic guitar, send it to the band, they – ‘critique’ it – and then we take it to rehearsal to see what we can do with it. The metaphor I use is that I bring an unseasoned piece of tofu to rehearsal, and we all season and cook it together.
In terms of the process before, sometimes the ideas will come as a riff first, or maybe a melody, or quite often a lyrical idea, but I always write on either a piano or acoustic guitar. A lot of songs can hide behind incredible production (and sometimes that’s amazing), but if you can play a completely naked song to a group of cynics without having tomatoes thrown at you, you’re onto a winner! Please don’t confuse this with playing a song completely naked… I mostly keep my clothes on in front of the band… mostly.
Could you tell us a bit about the writing/recording of the Syncr Music winning track “Save Me(I’m not crazy)”?
First of all, thanks for picking it! Save Me was written in about 10 minutes; it was a stream of consciousness song where I wanted to get down how overwhelmed I was feeling about everything wrong with the world (racism, inequality, climate change, abuse of power, etc). In Electric Enemy we feel very strongly about all of the issues raised, and Save Me seemed like a pretty good declaration of where we stand on all of the aforementioned topics. We also like to bring the subject of mental health to the forefront of our songwriting, and our next single is very much so about that.
For the recording process, we went into the studio with the awesome Sam Miller (Razorlight, 5 Seconds of Summer, and more!). Sam is one of those producers who doesn’t say yes to everything… in fact, the no’s are what make him brilliant.
What are some of your favourite venues to perform at?
We have had the pleasure of playing some amazing gigs in the past but I think we can all agree that opening up the main stage at was pretty incredible. We also recently played Manchester Academy supporting Bang Bang Romeo which was pretty great!
Do you have any plans for an EP or album?
We will be releasing an EP early next year, followed by an album. The great thing about working with our team is that we constantly communicate about when and why we should be releasing songs. The music industry is constantly changing, and we’re lucky to have a crew who can adapt!
Here at Artistic Echoes, we are always on the lookout for new artists do you have any to recommend?
They’re not specifically new, but UK band Tigercub are pretty amazing, also our synth-pop friends Pet Puma who we will be gigging with next week on 16th Nov at Folklore in Hoxton (tickets via the link in our bio)
What plans do you have for the rest of the year?
In early December we will be releasing the heaviest single we have EVER released… it is the first in a series, it’s called Therapy, and it takes 0 prisoners!!
Find out more:
Band Homepage: https://electricenemy.co.uk/
Band on label homepage: https://circularwave.eu/artists/electric-enemy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElectricEnemy/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/electricenemy/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-7VpIf8vYeQ7dsVAZel-OQ
