Perhaps the only true upside of recorded music having become an endless buffet at which diners are allowed to eat for free – while the chefs themselves are paid in pennies – is the reduction to rubble of boundaries that once kept genres and styles codified and confined. As the 21st Century approaches its first chorus, there has emerged a wave of groups - Nova Twins, Bob Vylan and Hot Milk, to name just three – possessed of the ability to mix sounds and schools with a fluency that is more first nature than second. And good for them.
But hold on, because back in the mists of time, before the advent of Spotify, there arrived a band who were the first on the British block to marry styles with the seamlessness of a sorcerer. What’s more, as Enter Shikari celebrate their 20th birthday, these trailblazers continue this task uninterrupted. Not for them the truism that a band generally produces its best work within its first seven or eight years – and certainly within its first decade – or the notion that encroaching age will inevitably rob music-makers of appetite and edge. A Kiss For The Whole World might just be its authors' finest work yet. Rooted in the present, somehow it is still the sound of the future.
