#actual reading

[prilittlence]

« There was green. Bright and beautiful greens of waving grass, and what appeared to be flowers in pinks and purples and golds. They disappeared into white sand. And beyond the white was cerulean »

Page 53 - The House in the cerulean sea - TJ Klune

[hollow-lime-green]

one of the books I am reading right now is just not as good as a lot of the fanfic I read. it's not bad in like, an offensive way. the writing just.. isn't very good. and I guess it doesn't really need to be, it's a ya mystery comedy kind of thing in a series of like 20 beach/airport reads (my book club really wanted something easy I guess, my last suggestion we did was she who became the sun lmao)

i look at the dialogue and some of the characterization and it's like, wow, that's so heavy handed that if it were in fanfic I would click away. at least it is short and easy ✨

[boonesfarmsangria]

If you spoke to Yannis Philippakis over the past seven years, chances are he would have mentioned a mythical, long-rumoured collaboration with the late, great Tony Allen. “I wanted to find a way to say goodbye to him within the music. It’s what felt right to do” 

“I would play the music at parties late at night,” the Foals frontman tells Rolling Stone UK from his Peckham studio, a cosy room packed full of synths and guitars that has birthed large parts of the new EP and countless Foals tracks. “My friends were sick of hearing it unfinished, but then after everything that happened… I felt a duty to finish it.” 

In late 2016, Philippakis had just come off a lengthy and draining tour behind Foals’ fourth album, What Went Down, the record that solidified the Oxford band as one of the most important UK guitar acts of a generation. As soon as he stepped off the plane, the opportunity was then presented to him to collaborate with the legendary Allen, an Afrobeat icon and close collaborator of the great Fela Kuti. 

“I went to Paris reluctantly because I’d been broken from this tour, and I’d done enough collaborations with people to know that it can often be quite a deflating experience that leaves you feeling quite cold,” he says. “The fact that this wasn’t the case with Tony was really, really exciting. There’s something that did just click in the room.” 

The trip to Paris was framed as Philippakis being one of a group of collaborators to go and work with Allen for an album where every track was a collaboration with a different musician. “I’d be like, ‘When’s Kevin Parker coming over?’” laughs Philippakis. “But I stopped asking after a while.” The pair ended up writing three tracks on the first day they were together. 

“I wasn’t really sure what would happen, and then the idea of this broader collaborative record stalled, but we were getting on well and wanted to do more,” he remembers. While the pair realised they wanted it to become a bigger project, Philippakis’ commitments with Foals and other projects stalled the pair’s progress. Then the pandemic happened, and it wrangled with Philippakis’ “fear of things remaining unfinished”, which he describes as “such a disappointing place for something to reside”. 

The idea of the project remaining unfinished was then amplified by the shock death of Allen in April 2020 from an abdominal aortic aneurysm at the age of 79. “It brought a whole other barrage of emotions to deal with,” reflects Philippakis. “It felt like this music would remain a myth for a long time.” 

Kit Monteith

Four years after the death of Allen, this much-teased and near-mythical music was finally announced in the form of Lagos Paris London, the debut EP from Philippakis’ new project Yannis & The Yaw. The five tracks on the EP are an irresistibly funky delight, bringing together two instantly recognisable musicians with no compromise from either. 

Even before Philippakis’ one-of-a-kind vocals come in on opening track ‘Walk Through Fire’, you know it’s him through the choppy, unique guitar tones that have defined Foals since day one. Behind him, Allen’s outstanding rhythm is equally identifiable. “The way that I play the guitar is a bit of a giveaway,” laughs Philippakis. “You can hear Foals’ DNA in this music. Because of my limitations as a guitarist, I play a certain way. Then obviously Tony. Tony plays like Tony. There’s only one Tony Allen.” 

Of the special and almost unexpected creative alchemy between the pair, Philippakis adds, “We’re both in the room and both dancing with each other, but there’s no necessity to dilute the intensity of each of the presences.” It’s heard on the slippery, dramatic ‘Night Green, Heavy Love’ and euphoric ‘Clementine’, the latter in particular serving as a delicious burst of pure joy. 

After Allen’s death, the feelings of grief and work on another Foals album kept the collaborative music in a box only brought out to tease friends with at parties. As time went on, though, the niggling feeling of dissatisfaction at leaving this music unfinished — as well as a desire to let the world hear some of the last music Allen worked on — led Philippakis to pick the project back up. 

“There had been a sense of duty to finish it anyway, but once he passed away, I realised that it really needed to be.” This sentiment was matched by a genuine excitement from the musician about what he had created with Allen. “For people who are fans of Tony’s, it’s an exciting collaboration to hear. You hear Tony Allen in a way that is different to his Afrobeat records, it’s different to the Jeff Mills stuff, it’s different to The Good, The Bad & the Queen. It’s some of the heaviest and angular stuff he’s been on. 

“It was an exciting, amazing thing that happened, and nobody had got to hear it,” Philippakis says. He remembers thinking, “We should put this out, partly to celebrate how versatile and amazing Tony is, but also to show this strange coupling of two people you wouldn’t necessarily predict, writing from different stages of their lives and from different cultures.” 

Ed Miles

Lagos Paris London would have never been completed, according to Philippakis, without the assistance of Allen’s engineers Vincent Taeger and Vincent Taurelle, affectionately known as The Vincents. Taeger served as the musical director for a number of memorial concerts for Allen, and they both play an ongoing role in the drummer’s legacy. 

After work on the music restarted following Allen’s death, the duo proved a vital connection between Philippakis and his late collaborator, as he explains. “I couldn’t have done it without them, and I wouldn’t have wanted to. They knew him intimately and acted as a bridge for me to be able to get on with Tony. I don’t even feel like he was super aware or particularly buzzed that I was there when I first arrived. I think somebody had talked to him about [Foals] in order for him to agree, but once we started playing, he started to get it.” 

While the basis of the music was already laid down from Philippakis and Allen’s short time together in the Paris studio, much of the production and the mixing of the songs was still to be completed. He particularly credits The Vincents with assisting him on mixing tracks and editing Allen’s drum parts. “It felt like quite a delicate thing to do,” says Philippakis. “It needed to be done correctly and with respect, but they also simply knew how Tony would want things to sound.” 

Philippakis says he didn’t feel he needed permission from The Vincents to finish and release the music — the initial ideas were brought into the studio by him — but felt a warmth and encouragement from their enthusiasm about sharing it with the world. “It made me feel like we were doing it for the correct reasons and that it was being finished in the right way,” says Philippakis. 

While much of Foals’ music features emotional and autobiographical lyrics from Philippakis, he wanted to take the opportunity to present a different slant on his storytelling with this music. At first, he expected to just be playing guitar and welcoming guest vocalists, but eventually got drawn towards the mic. 

“It didn’t feel like this record with Tony was the vessel for a personal, emotional kind of investigation,” reflects Philippakis. “When I had the first stab at doing the vocals with Tony there, there was definitely a dialogue between us about where the lyrics should live. It wouldn’t have felt right to be combing the detritus of my private life in these songs. There was a shared idea of where they should be.” 

These conversations led to lyrics that Philippakis doesn’t consider overly political, but to be “engaging outwardly with social issues, and what it means to be somebody alive in a city, in a society, in a population”. At the time of recording, Paris was experiencing a wave of industrial action, and Philippakis remembers walking to the studio past “huge mounds of rubbish everywhere”. “You had people very elegantly trying to sway through all this trash,” he says. “The juxtaposition of those two things and trying to write a record in the midst of it made me feel like these could be the lampposts for where the lyrics should be — out of one’s own mind and in the streets.” 

If one piece of introspection makes it into the album’s lyrical content, it’s in ‘Under the Strikes’, a song led by a giddy and fantastic horn line. Philippakis was finishing the track after Allen’s death and wanted the instrumentation to melt away and just leave Allen’s drums on their own “as a coda or farewell to him”. 

“I once thought we had time to spare,” Philippakis sings in lyrics he wrote after the passing of his friend as those unquestionable drums continue to rumble on. “I wanted to find a way of saying goodbye to him within the music,” he says. “It’s what felt right to do.” 

Yannis & the Yaw is, Philippakis is quick to point out, not the start of a solo career for the musician. What began as him working on Allen’s record ended up morphing into a more collaborative process, with Philippakis leading the songwriting. “There could have even been a world in which it would have been Foals featuring Tony Allen. It was open-ended, but quite quickly we realised it was a shared endeavour. If Tony was around now, maybe it would be called something slightly different, but it’s hard for me to know how he would have wanted it.” 

Lagos Paris London exists in the world as a five-track EP, but Philippakis says the excitement and creativity was there to make an entire album with Allen. It is being released as Yannis & The Yaw as an acknowledgement of the collaborative process with Allen and The Vincents, and to leave the door open for another collaborative project under the name with different musicians. 

Yaw is defined as a ‘swerve’ or ‘twist’, and Philippakis sees it as a signifier of the “orbiting collaborators” that birthed this project and will likely do so again in the future. His potential ideas for the future of the project include working with musicians from his native Greece, as well as something with Malian musicians he’s in touch with. “My listening habits in the last few years haven’t been that aligned to contemporary Western music or pop or indie music,” he explains. “I’m much more interested in learning about music from other cultures.” 

The release of the collaborative EP with Allen arrives during a time that Philippakis refers to as a “fallow year” for Foals, who last released an album in 2022 with Life Is Yours. Though he yearns to return to the road at some point, he is currently gaining excitement from tending to his garden at home in south London and writing music for musicals and plays. Upcoming projects include a score for The Other Place with playwright Alexander Zeldin, who he worked with last year on theatre piece The Confessions. “I get to write really heavy, savage, melancholic, ambient pieces,” he smiles of the welcome change of pace. 

For Foals, he sees their break as an opportunity to not slide into complacency and re-tread their steps. “We’ve been so productive and a victim of our own success,” he says of his band. “I find it baffling how productive we’ve been with Foals considering the touring. It’s been constantly fertile since we were 19. I am excited to do more but it’s important to have this brief inhalation and to look around and find out where we’re at.” 

Ed Miles

For now, the release of Lagos Paris London serves as the closing of a chapter in Philippakis’ creative life that has spanned a decade and is intertwined with memories, grief and joy. It’s released in memory of the incomparable Allen, a drummer and musical pioneer whose genius is written all across these five songs. 

“The first people that told me the news were The Vincents,” remembers Philippakis. “It was sudden. He hadn’t been ill; it just happened in a day. Even though he was old, it was surprising.” Even more than the sudden impossibility of finishing this music and losing a dear friend, Philippakis mourned the inability to go on tour with Allen around the music’s release, something the pair discussed animatedly while writing together. 

“We got on well in a gig environment. Whenever he’d play in London, I’d go and see him and we’d drink whisky,” he remembers with a smile. Philippakis will play a trio of shows in Amsterdam, Paris and London with the Yaw later this year, featuring musicians from the Lagos Paris London sessions and others from his wider creative orbit, all in service to the memory of his collaborator. 

“He was a larger-than-life character,” he says of Allen. “It was galvanising in the sense that we had to finish this music. We made something beautiful and imperfect and unfinished. If anything good was going to come from this, we had to finish it.” 

Taken from the August/September issue of Rolling Stone UK – you can buy it here now. 

Interview || Rolling Stone UK || Will Richards

[boonesfarmsangria]

Basement alchemy: Yannis & The Yaw sees Foals' Yannis Philippakis and Afrobeat legend Tony Allen forge a treasure with 'Walk Through Fire'

The lead track from YANNIS PHILIPPAKIS’ posthumous collaboration with Afrobeat drumming legend TONY ALLEN captures the electrifying spark that ignited during their global musical meeting, weaving a tapestry of sound that reflects the cultural touchstones of Lagos, Paris, and London. Read our latest Dork Mixtape cover feature now.

Words: Martyn Young.

Photos: Kit Monteith, Rishi Salujah.

“It’s about serendipity and coming together with someone.” There’s always something amazing when you get to meet your heroes, but for Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis, the opportunity to not only meet but work with legendary Afrobeat pioneering drummer Tony Allen was a truly special experience. Tragically, Tony passed away during the pandemic, leaving the work that they started in flux, but seven years after they first met, Yannis has now put together a beautiful EP documenting their time and the music they made together as a special project under the name Yannis And The Yaw. ‘Lagos Paris London’ is a reflection of a moment in time and two generations meeting and creating a little bit of magic.

With Foals riding high on the wild success of their fourth album ‘What Went Down’, a call offering an intriguing opportunity came following two years of hard touring. “I got a call when we were deep in a Foals tour. We were touring ‘What Went Down’ so it was quite a few years ago now. I got a call from a mutual friend who said, do you want to go and write with Tony Allen in Paris?” says Yannis.

The mention of Tony Allen’s name immediately conjured excitement as he remembered the pivotal role Tony and his work as drummer for Fela Kuti, as well as his long and winding career, played in the genesis and evolution of Foals. “A lot of our formative musical years were spent listening to Fela Kuti,” he explains. “Especially this one compilation of Tony Allen’s that I think is just called ‘The Best Of’. It’s a quadruple vinyl. We used to hammer it when we were writing ‘Antidotes’ and ‘Total Life Forever’. I was a huge fan.”

He was immediately hooked on the unique skill of his drumming. “Another song that we loved that he played on was ‘La Ritournelle’ by Sebastian Tellier; that was a song we all obsessed over. His drumming is a huge part of why that song is great.”

While the opportunity sounded exciting, a “no brainer”, as Yannis explains it, the reality of actually making it work became more of an issue. “I got home, and I hadn’t been home for a couple of months, and I collapsed into a puddle the moment the keys were thrown on the table. I was like, fuck, I don’t know if I’ve got the energy to get up and get to Paris the next day,” says Yannis as he describes his exhaustion after a punishing Foals tour. “I almost put it off, but my friend at the time encouraged me and said, look, you’ve got to go there for two days. It might be the experience of a lifetime, then you can come home and rest.”

For the experience of a lifetime, Yannis recounts the details in a refreshingly simple and down-to-earth style. “So, I trotted off with my guitar to the Eurostar and I got there in the morning,” he begins. “It was a basement studio. Very French and very 70s. Full of cigarette smoke and bad carpet and mirrors in weird places. It was basically Tony’s home, in a way. His drums were permanently set up in the live room.”

For the music icon that is Tony Allen, he had seen and experienced everything there is to experience and had worked with a who’s who of musical legends, “What was funny about the first encounter was he wasn’t particularly phased or that excited that I was there. He was just in his own vibe,” laughs Yannis. “I don’t think he knew of my work. It was set up, and he was in a place where he was very open to collaborating with people. He was doing some stuff with Jeff Mills. Tony, in general, collaborated a lot. He approached it like a jazz drummer. The producers and the other musicians that were around Tony knew me; they helped me set up and were very welcoming.”

Was there a sense of trepidation, though, and having to prove yourself and prove your musical chops? “It wasn’t that Tony wasn’t welcoming, but he was waiting to see what it was going to be like. Who’s this little punk?” he laughs.

Almost instantly, though, the musical alchemy bubbled up, and from their first jam together came the project’s first track with the heavy groove of ‘Walk Through Fire’. “It’s a simple song,” he explains. “It largely revolves around this one riff. We played it round a couple of times, and some of these other French guys in the studio who knew Tony played along and were either helping out on bass or percussion. We kinda had it there. The moment that that had happened we were getting on like a house on fire after that. The room changed.”

As they played more and more, Yannis discovered at close quarters what he loved about Tony’s artistry and even discovered new things. “I was surprised at how quietly he played,” he says with deep reverence. “Coming from proper big arena rock shows on this Foals tour and playing songs like ‘What Went Down’ and ‘Snakeoil’ was a total pivot into this much more deft style of playing. Just being in a room with him and hearing him in the moment playing his drums that I had become so familiar with, the texture and the rhythm of the way he played and that being on something that I was writing live on the spot and that we were inhabiting the same moment of creativity together in a room was just electrifying.”

‘Walk Through Fire’ was the spark that ignited the whole project. “It was the first thing. It’s immediate in the same way that it was immediate in the room on that day,” enthuses Yannis. “The lyrics are pretty resonant with the time we’re living in. Tony encouraged this in me. He wanted the lyrics to be engaged with the social fabric. A lot of Tony’s music, and the lineage of Fela Kuti and Afrobeat, is often very political with protest songs. In discussing with Tony about the lyrics, he wanted it to mine the social discord. It resonates today. It’s got this fresh energy. It feels like a more garagey or bluesy song. It’s quite rough and freeing and fun. It was a good entry point to the project but also makes sense chronologically.”

The jamming session in Paris was intended to lead to work beginning on a full album, but events got in the way firstly with scheduling issues and then Covid before Tony’s sad passing, which ultimately gave Yannis the impetus to turn those special moments into something real and tangible. “Covid really scuppered us because he was based in Paris. It was impossible for so long,” he explains. “As is the way with collaborations, once you’ve captured the lighting in the bottle, sometimes you don’t complete it when you should. You know that it’s there, so you get slightly complacent about it. I had a lot of stuff with Foals and he was busy as well doing The Good, The Bad and The Queen. He was really busy, and between us we couldn’t get together. Sadly and tragically, he passed away during Covid. It strangely was a massive motivation to try to finish it. Largely out of guilt that we hadn’t done it while he was alive and realising that it had been such a special experience in my life creatively, but just as a person, it was such a unique moment for us to have not completed it and played shows together. Out of bittersweet guilt, I really wanted to finish it. We needed to put them out to do it justice.”

The EP is a beautiful tribute to the enduring legacy of Tony Allen and the creative spirit he represents. “His music will live on forever,” says Yannis passionately. “The drums will play on. He had such an incredible and unique style of playing. He was the originator. He was the source. There’s an untappable well that will continue to inspire people for generations.”

The record is also an example of his dexterity as a musician and willingness to still try new things. “This release is an interesting perspective on Tony’s writing,” says Yannis. “It’s definitely a different project than Tony’s worked on before. It’s the heaviest stuff he was involved in. For me, it’s obviously the most inspired by jazz and Afrobeat. For people coming to the EP, it’s an interesting prism that we were both put in and thrust together to write this.”

Even more remarkable is that it almost never happened. “Had I not gone to Paris that day and further along, had we not kept it up and had we not finished it, through these chance meetings and happenings, you can end up with something that’s precious and is permanent,” he continues. “When so much of life is impermanent, that’s a really important lesson that I learned. I feel protective over the record. It’s a treasure and a document of two people who came together. He was in his seventies when I met him, and I was in my twenties. There’s something amazing about two people from different cultures and backgrounds and generations being thrust together unknowingly without knowing each other and through music very quickly bonding and forming and creating something that will last.”

This collaborative project comes at a time when Foals are able to take a pause and reflect on a triumphant couple of years following their euphoric 2022 album ‘Life Is Yours’ which cemented them firmly at the top of the UK band pantheon after almost two decades of innovation. “We’ve been smashing it for so many years; it’s been such a constant focus of our lives,” says Yannis, explaining the band’s desire to take stock. “It has been incredible to devote yourself to something so absorbing, but I think every now and then you just have to come up for air and remind yourself what life looks like above the parapet. For self-preservation and the preservation of the band, it’s important to occasionally stop and assess what exactly we want to do next rather than just automatically make another record without consideration. This time, we want to think about what we’re going to do next, and I think that’s natural after having put out quite a few records; it’s important for us to decide what we want to do.”

In the meantime, Yannis And The Yaw offers the opportunity to have some fun and do something a little different. Certainly not a solo project, but just a different kind of creative expression. “I’ve left it open-ended,” he says excitedly. “The idea behind the Yaw part is that it could be a rotating collaborative project. The title, ‘Lagos Paris London’, is the cultural touchstones for the EP, and it’s a musical postcard from these locations. If there was to be another project with the Yaw again, it would be three different locations and a different cultural mix. It’s not meant to be a solo expression. This EP is an archive of time recording with Tony and French musicians Vincent Taeger and Vincent Tuarelle, who were really important and produced it. I would imagine they might be part of the Yaw. It’s important to make the distinction. If I were to do a solo record, it would sound a lot different. This is led by Tony and the group of his musicians in France. If I was to do another one, it would sound quite different. There are no plans for that right now. I want to leave it open-ended and let this EP have its time in the sun, and let’s see what happens later on.”

With the EP arriving at the end of the summer, there’s a tantalising opportunity for perhaps some gigs as Yannis looks to continue to honour the legacy of one of his all-time heroes. “I think we will,” he smiles when asked if he’s planning to bring these songs to life on stage. “Not an extensive tour, but a couple of shows to give the record a good release and a good send-off and honour Tony.”

[boonesfarmsangria]

Lee Campbell (Under the Radar): Congrats on the new album, Life Is Yours. Did the writing for this project flow quite freely?

Yannis Philippakis: It was quite a singular experience. It was different to any other record, largely because of the external context of COVID and lockdowns. I think musically and instrumentally it was fairly free-flowing. There was a lot of jamming. The three of us had nothing else to do and had nowhere else to be, and didn’t want to be anywhere else. We would spend a lot of time in this practice room and jam. The bit that was more challenging, personally for me, in the initial stages was trying to find the right lyrical approach. I had to change it up a bit, because obviously I’d got used to feeding off an immediate inspiration, some type of charge, stimulation, or when I’m traveling—I write a lot of my lyrics when I’m traveling. I also like to write outside and observe people, observe situations. I didn’t have any of that. It forced my hand to make some imaginative leaps. That’s why there’s songs like “2001” or “Crest of the Wave.” They are fantastical and nostalgic in a way that had the access of the planet not stopped, I don’t think it would have been written in that way.

You are speaking with Under the Radar magazine today Yannis and I couldn’t go without asking about your song on the album, amazingly also called “Under the Radar.” What was the background vision or energy on that song?

Quite surreal. When I think of the song, I think of Devo and the Pixies. In a way that both of them had this retro view of the future or sci-fi. Frank Black will sing about space and aliens. [Laughs] It’s probably the hardest one to un-pick. I didn’t want to force it into being too literal a narrative. I just liked that it had these strange, fragmented images. Essentially, it’s someone alone at night being lit up by their phone glow. There was a period where we thought we were gonna get beamed up to a spaceship, traveling across distant galaxies. Now, we just sit and the light that is emerging from our rooms at night-time, is coming from this tiny little black soul-sucker! I was riffing off that thought.

One of my favorite tracks is “Flutter.” I was getting Stone Roses flashbacks listening to it, believe it or not. Were there any particular moods or inspirations behind that song?

Oh cool, it’s one of my favorites too. I listen to a lot of West African music from the Sahara. I’m quite into it. It wasn’t a pre-written song as such. It came together very quickly one afternoon, at the end of working on something else. We had finished another job for the day, I don’t remember what it was specifically. I was just looping it, and often when I’m working with loops they lead you down these slightly more interesting angles. Jack [Bevan] knocked out this kinda lazy beat. We purposefully left it to be this slower, more hypnotic groove. We didn’t wanna push it into the more upbeat territory of the record because we felt there was plenty of that. It’s a more laid-back moment.

What has the reception been like to the new songs in a live setting?

It’s been great. We haven’t played any of the deeper cuts yet. That’ll come later. We’ve been playing “Wake Me Up.” We’ve been opening the shows with that and that’s just perfect. It feels like the perfect opener. It just gets the party started. [Laughs] We play “2001,” which goes down great. That was even going down well, weirdly, when we played it at some of the London shows we did in April, and I don’t think it was even out yet, but it was connecting already. I feel like that one has really connected in a live setting. It’s one of my favorite tracks in terms of its sheer summery, optimistic vibes. It’s like a song we’ve never written before. I am quite intoxicated by it and maybe some other people are too. It’s gratifying. “2a.m.” is like a big, singalong moment. I’ve noticed it doesn’t get people in the mosh pits going, but it gets everyone singing along, which is nice.

I watched your performance at Glastonbury headlining The Other stage? It was amazing. Can you give me a few words to sum up how that felt?

It’s kind of overwhelming really. That slot is a prestigious slot. It’s not one that we ever thought we would necessarily get, on a scale where we play a lot of shows and we love playing live, it’s not like any other show. To me it felt like one of the pinnacles of our live career. When we look back, it will be in the top handful of moments. It had the added energy of a post-COVID Glastonbury. We didn’t have Glastonbury for three years. It was such an important thing for the psyche of the nation. I don’t think I’m over-stating that. There’s something so positive about Glastonbury. In the early days, I hadn’t fully experienced Glastonbury before the band. I didn’t necessarily buy into that entire mythology around it. And now, I’m like a zealous convert. I just think that it’s an amazing place. To be one of the people invited to channel that energy and help create that energy for the people is a privilege. It was a joy. We loved it. It is tricky to take it fully in. The scale of it is too big for one brain. But, having played the Pyramid Stage a few years back, I was more determined to be present in the moment. I found that it worked. On “Spanish Sahara” definitely, partly because the song has some space in it, I can let the emotion ride over me. On the other end of the spectrum on “Inhaler” where it went full feral, I was just watching the flares. It felt like some ancient Roman army. It felt otherworldly, it was cool.

There’s a lot of disillusion and discontent with politicians and so-called leaders at the moment. Music can be such a safe haven for people when the going gets tough. You play America in the autumn. What would your message to any of your American fan base be in these more difficult moments?

I think that they should resist, defy, protest, and then come to shows, and remember there’s still beauty in the world, despite whatever political machinations are going on. A Foals show is the perfect place to come and release any sort of energy that needs releasing. We’d embrace people that come to the shows and use it as catharsis in some way. Also, just to party and have a good time. It can’t all be darkness all the time. You have to allow yourself to have releases and to have joy.

So many groups are still making music together and playing to huge crowds in their late 60s, 70s, and sometimes 80s. There is a phrase you’ve used before called “Foals Forever.” Do you think there comes a stage where you should bow out gracefully when you are at the top of your game?

There’s a few different ways to look at it, and I’m not really sure where I land on it. Usually there’s a creative potency that does dilute over time. I don’t think anyone’s 18th album is usually their best. I just feel that we are dedicated to making music. I feel like I’m gonna be a songwriter for the rest of my life. I think that all three of us, and the band, are musicians for life. It’s just a question whether Foals is the vessel, or the entire vessel. Unless something drastic happens, we love playing live and we love making records. Maybe the frequency with which we operate might change over the next period, but it’s hard to predict because we are having a great time. Genuinely, it’s so enjoyable to be in the band. Sometimes I think I wanna go off and make a Greek folk record and Jimmy [Smith] wants to make a solo record, but I think the main mothership will always be Foals, and hopefully that mothership stays spinning forever. The balance that would be nice would be, the dedication that we had to have to Foals has been monolithic. It’s also the reason that members have left, it’s all-consuming. Even for our personal lives, that’s something that would be worth addressing. We’re not getting any younger and we tour quite hard. Some sort of balance would be good, but it would make me sad if the band stopped operating.

Apart from a long nap after the current tour, what’s over the horizon for Foals? Any projects you have your eyes on?

We are gonna tour through 2023, so this phase is not gonna end until next summer really. Jimmy wants to get moving on some solo work. I have some unfinished music with Tony Allen, the legendary Afrobeat drummer who passed away two years ago. I feel a responsibility to finish that project. I’ve got four or five tracks with that, so I plan to go to Paris and finish that. That’s an awesome body of work. We have a secret dub version of Life Is Yours that was made by Dan Carey, one of the producers, he’s done an actual live dub on the mixing desk. That’s gonna come out at some point. There also might be some new Foals tracks coming out next year.

If you could introduce one Foals album to someone that had never listened to the band, what would it be?

That’s a tricky one. I would probably say, start at the beginning. It’s not the one that is the most representative. The way that we think about the band is that we have built up a body of work. The thing that we enjoy about our trajectory is the journey from one record to the next; how much evolution there has been, the different pallets, growth in songwriting. So, hear the band in its nascent, green, edgy core when we were 19 or 20 years old. We didn’t have a microphone, we didn’t have amps, a record label. It was just us being scrappy mates, so I think it’s cool to start there and then go through the catalog.

Any artists you deeply admire that you would like to collaborate with?

I would like to work with Kieran Hebden [UK dance producer] again. His main moniker is Four Tet. We did a session just before we did Antidotes. I would like to pick that back up. We recorded with him before we went to New York. We did a version of “Cassius,” a version of “Tron,” and a version of “Balloons.” We went into the studio and he conducted the whole thing. It would be interesting to do a reprise of that with newer material. He is an amazing musician and was in an old post-rock group called Pylon.

I would also like to make a record with Steve Albini. I don’t know if that will ever happen, but I would love to be recorded by Steve Albini. I love his band Shellac. A lot of the bands that we listened to in the early stages of Foals formed our musical DNA. Steve Albini played some hand in it—Pixies, Surfer Rosa; Don Caballero, American Don; Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I rate him a lot.

UnderTheRadar || Interview || Lee Campbell

[boonesfarmsangria]

Drummer Jack Bevan discusses the pure joy and spontaneous freedom that manifests on the group’s seventh album.

About halfway through Foals’ jubilant new album, Life Is Yours, curling guitars combine with tumbling drums for the 36-second interlude “(summer sky),” and majestically, the British rock trio graze the sun. Unlike Icarus, however, the Yannis Philippakis–fronted band doesn’t fall to Earth, but rather melds one of the finest rock records of the summer.

Foals have been around for over 15 years, having released six previous albums, but they have perhaps not sounded as liberated—and fun—as they do on Life Is Yours. Boosted by Philippakis’s mighty warble, the band—which is currently rounded out by guitarist Jimmy Smith and drummer Jack Bevan—celebrate life on the new record and consequently exude pure joy.

“I actually met Yannis on an internet classified ad,” Bevan says via Zoom of the band’s origins on a recent afternoon before a festival set in Lisbon. “I posted an ad saying I was looking for a band because I had been in a few others, but they had sort of broken up. I posted this ad saying, ‘Drummer who likes Don Caballero, Boards of Canada, and Aphex Twin looking for someone to play with.’ This was long enough ago that Yannis responded to the ad and sent me a handmade tape cassette with all of his favorite musical influences.” 

From the first online exchange, Philippakis brought Bevan on to join his then-band The Edmund Fitzgerald, where they began their math rock–indebted experimentation together. “I was kind of shocked and in awe at how Yannis was seemingly not schooled very much because he kept flunking off to rehearse music, going to parties and stuff. But he got into Oxford University and he was probably one of the smartest kids in the whole school,” Bevan says. “There was this kind of a duality there

Philippakis, down to his dark eyes and thick beard, is certainly one of the most compelling frontmen out of the UK and a figure whom young Americans have been flocking to see perform for well over a decade now. Not unlike Samuel Herring of Baltimore synth-pop stalwarts Future Islands, the singer not only has a fiery timbre but a fierce persona. On stage, bent over his electric guitar and threshing on the strings, he emerges as a gentle beast. On record, he wears his emotions on his sleeve and lets the listener in. “Life is yours / Break away,” he sings on the opening title track off Life Is Yours, getting even the grouchiest listener to dance. “Life is yours / Your life awaits,” he then shouts and, in a fashion similar to that of David Byrne on Talking Heads’ iconic “Once in a Lifetime,” he jolts listeners awake. 

Along with Philippakis, Bevan and Smith have been commanding listeners’ attention for almost 20 years, their previous album Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost from 2019 releasing as two parts and landing them a Mercury Prize nomination. While several other groups that started in the 2000s have since disbanded, Foals stayed together due in part to Philippakis’s tenacity, appearing to make music as if their lives depend on it. “Foals happened for a few reasons,” Bevan says. “Our previous band was very math rock-y, very complicated, with time changes and 15-minute-long songs, and it was great. When that dissolved, we liked the idea of playing fun music—music that would get people dancing.” 

Having joined the band in 2005, Bevan is by now a rock veteran. “We’ve been doing it for so long now that I can’t really remember a life without it,” he says. “It’s interesting—you go through phases because any band that’s been around for a long time, you start off, you’re this new band and people get very excited about new bands. There’s hype and that kind of thing. And not all of those new bands end up sticking around for that many years. That’s one of the things that I’m kind of proud of. There aren’t many other bands that we came up with that are still going for whatever reason—it’s a lot of your life to dedicate to. Also, I think one of the strengths in our band is that we’ve always put a lot of effort and pride into our live shows.”

Foals have yet to tour North America with Life Is Yours, with that stretch set to take place in the fall, but the album is almost readymade for such forthcoming stages as New York’s Terminal 5 and Los Angeles’s Hollywood Palladium. From the aforementioned opening title track, the record spins the anthemic second song “Wake Me Up” which, with its zig-zagging guitars and thumping drums, will almost surely compel audiences to stomp along. Tucked inside the zippy song, however, with Philippakis begging, “Hey man / Won’t you wake me up?,” is the more urgent reminder that life is not a rehearsal, that, however trying, this is it. Still, Foals aren’t pessimists but rather one of the most impassioned contemporary bands.

The deceptively sunny “2am” even sounds like an ode to the titular wee hour, that time late in the night when seemingly anything—maybe even sudden romance—can happen. As Philippakis sings, “I lost myself again,” the listener, too, can soak in that spontaneous freedom. It’s after the “(summer sky)” interlude, during the album’s buoyant second half, however, when Foals shows why they’re also infectiously joyful. On the album standout, “Crest of the Wave,” over winding guitars, Philippakis sings, “I promise I need ya,” and no matter the addressee, the “ya” he pleads with is really anyone’s lover and conveys the record’s broader theme of indestructible romance. 

Foals, after all, champion love, whether it be for an individual, a place, or music itself. As Bevan says, he and the band are “really excited” to play and, with the fire within them, they will blaze across the stage as they craft something magical on each stop of their tour.

FLOOD Magazine || Interview || Zachary Weg

North American Tour

[boonesfarmsangria]

Take a step back to meet the sound.

The trio of Yannis Philippakis , Jack Bevan and Jimmy Smith have become synonymous with alternative rock over the past decade. The multiple presentations around the globe, an almost impeccable recording career and being recognized as one of the most intense live acts in the United Kingdom, have earned them a place in the depths of collective music mania, delivering their most recent fruit in each of the eleven tracks that make up Life Is Yours .

Thus, and anticipating his show as part of the Corona Capital 2022 festival , we took on the task of talking with Smith about everything related to the creation of this latest material, its growth during the pandemic and what keeps Foals burning in the middle of 2022 .

The project, originally from Oxford, England, would release its seventh studio album via Warner Music on June 17. This after a flurry of singles in past months including “Wake Me Up” , “2am” , “Looking High” , “2001” and “Crest of the Wave” . Being able to contextualize them as a single piece seems to suit us as well as the members.

“It's really exciting to get to the end of the whole process. Write, record, mix, publish the songs. I'm excited that people can listen to the entire album.”

The production of John Hill , coupled with the peculiar moment experienced by the musicians, ended up locating Life Is Yours between tones of soft sound and messages of encouragement. Positioning itself as one of the most luminous and dance works of the group.

After the last two years, Foals ' music seems to reflect the least pessimistic conclusion to face the post-pandemic era. We have changed human beings, but the world is still out there, now between funk and electro indie rhythms.

“I would say the core idea is that it's okay to be yourself, to exist as an individual. With all the extra time on our hands during the pandemic, it was inevitable to run into these big personal questions. Many people destroyed their sense of self in order to rediscover themselves. The title celebrates this process; life is yours, you can make of it what you want”.

Smith would take this new philosophy to its ultimate consequences. Starting from forays into synthesizer and drum machines , he reached much more intimate layers with introspection in front of him.

“I felt like I discovered myself through creating new music. Personally, I realized all the toxic people I had surrounded myself with, recognizing myself as an introvert. Life in a band is so social that I've never had the time to spend more than two days on my own, you know? He made me put into context how much I appreciate my close friends. The lockdown was a genuinely positive experience of self-discovery.”

The cancellation of the tour during 2020 due to the release of Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost would place the project in a more than necessary pause for their state of mind, giving them enough space to regain strength towards new material. Accentuating the sensation of change with positive nuances.

“I was tired, fed up with the music industry, I felt unhappy. Now everything is different, the way we think, the way we work. We're still the same band, but we've grown."

The respite in the form of new music seems to have reinvigorated Foals within the contemporary scene. Intoxicating them with the necessary energy to attack, between sound and scenarios, for a very good time more.

Our talk with the guitarist would come to an end, but not before exposing his perspective towards his long-awaited return to Mexico, as part of the 2022 edition of the Corona Capital festival.

“I am very excited to return for two reasons; concert first. It will be great to be back with all these new songs, to live them together with the Mexican public. And secondly, the last time we played the festival there was a taco al pastor booth as part of the catering . They were great, it's my favorite meal before any show, I ate hundreds that time. I can not wait to return".

INDIE ROCKS! || Interview || BLUES ARAIZA