Enter Shikari’s Rou Reynolds says Reading Festival ‘power outage’ wasn’t an ‘act of censorship’
Musician spoke on stage about water companies and the Conservative party before the band’s set was cut short
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Enter Shikari’s Rou Reynolds has said that a power outage, and not an “act of censorship” was responsible for his microphone being cut on stage at Reading Festival.
The band performed at the annual music festival on Saturday (27 August), during which frontman Reynolds accused water companies of pollution.
“Sort your s*** out,” he had the crowd shouting.
In his review of the day’s events, The Independent’s Mark Beaumont joked that Reynolds delivered “a speech about Tory sewage policy that suffers so many microphone issues you start to suspect that Nadine Dorries is manning the sound desk”.
However, on Sunday (28 August), Reynolds tweeted clarifying what had happened after fans suggested that his sound had been deliberately cut.
“Just to clarify everyone – it wasn’t an act of censorship, it was a power outage at front-of-house. Immense bad luck, and of course bad timing,” he wrote.
“We then had our set cut as the power cut pushed our set over our allotted time slot. Frustrating as hell but the festival has to keep to the timetable understandably, to stop stampedes in between stages. We had a f***ing blast though. Big up everyone at @OfficialRandL. Love only.”
Reynolds then added: “Regardless of the power cut pause, I still got to berate Thames Water & other polluting water companies in front of thousands of people, + thousands more watching back on BBC.
“So even if it had been an attempt at censorship it was a poor one as I still got to finish the speech.”
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