#yannis philappakis

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“I Don’t Want It To End!” Yannis Philippakis On The Future Of Foals

Regeneration, creative evolution, and carving out new memories...

CLASHMUSIC 22 · 07 · 2022 [x]

It’s been 14 years since Foals released their debut album ‘Antidotes’ in 2008, and since then the band have had a sprawling and successful career consisting of all seven of their albums reaching the Top 10, six Glastonbury slots and lengthy tour schedules across the world.

On the back of their latest release, Foals have re-emerged from the pandemic with a new sound on ‘Life Is Yours’, a sound which can be described as a love letter written from the time of recording amid the pandemic, with best wishes to today. It’s a love letter to those glorious summer days with friends and sticky dancefloors that we all dearly missed during that terrible time and are now so grateful to have again.

For Foals frontman Yannis Philappakis, his feelings are still overwhelmingly positive despite losing band members and losing the ability to play live thanks to COVID. “We’re feeling great about it,” begins Yannis, “it’s great to be playing live again. This record had one of the longest gestation periods of any record we’ve done. We had no idea who we were appealing to, when the record would come out and we didn’t know what the world was going to look like after COVID.” When this album was recorded in Foals windowless studio amidst the pandemic, the songs were their windows to a world without restrictions and the bright euphoria of life that was back in full swing. Now we’re here, this record is purpose-built for our first full unrestricted summer and the summers beyond.

“The fact that the album exists now and the world is here to meet it feels like a real relief. I hoped the record would be matched by the reception, and it has. We wanted it to come out in the summer, and wanted it to be something that we all missed during those times. I think what’s exciting is the debate surrounding this new record, you’ve got some Foals fans that like the heavier side of things we’ve done which isn’t really present on this record, and I sort of enjoy astounding certain expectations. This record might take some people by surprise, but me and the band are really excited.”

The bright summery sounds of ‘Life Is Yours’ put Foals into a whole new world they’ve never explored before, clearly demonstrating the ways their world was shifted during the pandemic. “I think we reached the end of an era with ‘Everything Not Saved’, in the sense that ‘Holy Fire’, ‘What Went Down’ and ‘Everything Not Saved’ all played an equal emphasis on the many ways that we write songs, they were all evenly balanced in terms of songwriting and we just couldn’t repeat that way of structuring an album again. We took every sort of plan out of the band’s sound and left ourselves in the middle of a field not knowing where to go. At that point we’ve then got to sort of start again, we stripped everything right back and made things more focused and unified.”

Despite the summery sounding album releasing in the summer, the summery sound wasn’t planned. “It wasn’t planned, but I think it just sort of came out because of how bleak everything was when we were writing. Usually we would demonstrate that in the lyrics, or at least I would. Our inspiration for songs would usually be a positive charge in the here and now. But there was none of that going on this time around, COVID was just this weird airless void, and the vibe had to come from somewhere else. We had to escape the bleakness.”

Foals did everything to escape the bleakness of the pandemic, not only with the sound, As well as Foals taking a new sonic adventure, its subject matter also joined in on this new optimistic sun-kissed sound. Whilst this is most definitely a pop album, frontman Yannis Philippakis doesn’t pair the pop sound with those party starting tropes of the modern pop song. He conjures evocative images of far-flung places, from the boreal coastal forests of the Pacific North-West (‘Life Is Yours’) to the beguiling beauty of the mountains perched upon the sea in St. Lucia (‘Crest Of The Wave’). Escapism can also be achieved via time rather than place, as shown by the sugar rush nostalgia of ‘2001’ or a rumination on the changing face of their hometown Oxford’s club scene on ‘Looking High’.

“Instead of having things to write about in the here and now, the pandemic was just nothingness, so instead I was thinking about the past, the future or semi-imaginary landscapes and got a song out of those thoughts. It was a bit of a challenge that I wasn’t really used to. In the years before, I was literally writing about things that had happened five minutes prior. I’d write in the pub, I’d write driving about London, I’d write about where I was living. This was a new challenge but I enjoyed it.”

Upon release last month, ‘Life Is Yours’ flew straight into the Top 10 and was well received by critics. This is now the seventh Top 10 album in Foals’ discography, a streak they’ve managed to keep with every album for 14 years. But looking back at his prosperous career with Foals, is there anything he would do differently if he had the chance? And is there anything he wouldn’t change for the world?

“There’s probably stuff I’d do differently, a lot of it’s probably technical stuff like mixing and changing the mixes on certain tracks in the past, lots of early albums I’d love to go back and tinker with, but I’m happy with where we are now. It’s important to be accepting of the past, and I miss Walt and Edwin. I think something I would’ve done differently is making sure they had stayed with the band until today, but everything happens for a reason. That entirely changed the trajectory of the band and sometimes that can have benefits, but I probably would have wanted to have kept them together, the original muchachos.”

The departure of two members in the last four years is certainly a sad affair, but as Yannis states, things happen for a reason. Back in 2018, Foals’ bassist Walter Gervers left the group after his 12 year tenure, under amiable terms. “The parting has been sad but we remain firm friends,” the band wrote in a statement on Instagram. Last year, their keyboard player Edwin Congreave decided to do the same thing and ​​hang up his musical boots to pursue other avenues of life. Edwin is currently studying a postgraduate degree in economics at Cambridge.

So how well have the band adapted without Walter and Edwin? “Thankfully the songwriting hasn’t necessarily changed much as it was mainly me, Jimmy and Jack that did most of the writing anyway,” continues Yannis, “but socially, things have changed. Being on tour without them is very different and things feel quieter without them both there. It’s a feeling that’s changed without them, but still we’re having a great time at the moment. We still love doing what we do, we’re having a laugh and we’re playing better than we’ve ever played before. What’s important is that the band is still going. Thing is, not many bands can lose two members then headline The Other Stage at Glasto and still rock it. I feel pride in the fact we’re still going, we’ve just got a couple of shrapnel hits but fundamentally the mission goes on. I think it’s good that we exist, and I don’t want it to end.”

As Yannis says, Foals have taken a couple of bruises with the loss of Walter and Edwin, but they’ve kept calm, carried on and are better than they’ve ever been. With that in mind, a new record recently released and a heavy touring schedule until the end of the year, what’s next for Foals? “I’ve got some musical projects to finish,” says Yannis, “I’ve got a project to finish that I did with Tony Allen who sadly passed away two years ago now, and I’ve done some solo projects, but I’m not really sure what I want them to be yet. Apart from that, it’s just continuing this Foals stuff, we’re gonna be touring well into 2023 and we’ll start thinking about new music from there, but without a doubt we’ll be keeping productive.”

After a successful 16 years since their formation, after shrinking from a five-piece, to a four-piece and now a trio, after the pandemic stopped everything they wanted to do – Foals didn’t allow themselves to be shot down. They’ve adapted, picked up the pieces and fought on by creating a masterful new record that’s a result of the journey they’ve been on in the last few years. They tell us ‘Life Is Yours’, because their strength as people and a band has made those lives their own.

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fangirling so bad right now

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Jimmy and Yannis in Bangkok 2019

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Nine Songs: Foals

Returning for the second time this year withEverything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 2, Foals’ Yannis Philippakis leads The Line of Best Fit through nine songs that have moulded their distinctive sound.

Since Antidotes release in 2008, Foals have cemented themselves with an unwavering fan base, a notoriously incredible live performance and an expansive, gorgeous sound.

In a time where attentions are constantly shifting and audiences flock to a new artist every week, their resilience and robustness has seen them stand up against the test of modern time. As we sit down to chat in a Peckham pub, Yannis Philippakis tells me it’s been a slow but gradual road for the band, and we dive into the tracks that have soundtracked an album-filled career. Now releasing a sixth album and their second of 2019, it’s a testament to Foals’ distinguishable sound; soaring soundscapes, twinkling guitar melodies, and serious groove.

Reflecting on Foals’ humble beginnings and their journey to date, Philippakis muses the importance of spatial freedom, a diverse musical education, and a zest for instrumentals.

“We stopped thinking about music in a tribal way, I think that’s something that’s fallen into Foals and stuck. We wanted to carve out a large space in which we could operate. Only then could we write a song like "Cassius," or we could write a song like "Inhaler" or "Spanish Sahara," and all of them could be Foals songs. But, actually their actual musical identities can still be quite different.”

“We didn’t approach Foals from an indie perspective for a long time and I think that the musical DNA of the band really helped us with that, even though in some ways we now write songs that are way more conventional, more communicative. The band’s background with all of its various references and influences are disparate and diverse. We first thought Foals was a pop band, because up until then we’d just been listening to Steve Reich, or techno. Maybe that’s helped us to stand out.”

Five UK top 10 albums, 30 music videos and a bank of world tours under their belt, we meet in the run-up to album no. 6, Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost - Part 2. Part 1 was released earlier this year in March, and threw us headfirst into a wealth of sprawling, groove-ridden art-rock anthems. From Philippakis's earlier musical projects and scanning through his nine songs, a pattern has emerged that’s shaped the way their songs are constructed.

“From the age of 15 to 20 it was a big period in time where I didn’t really listen to music with vocals, and often the vocals would be secondary - in The Edmund Fitzgerald it was the same. For a long time my musical focus was on instrumentation and not on songwriting and lyrics as such - that’s definitely something that’s come later. Hopefully there’s something good about that, because we didn’t come from a conventional rock band point of view. When we started up Foals it was kind of an action against that in a way.”

While Foals’ rise to success has been steady, and surely assisted by an abundance of indie night DJs across the country, he muses on the pros and cons of the pacing for a band that have soundtracked a generation. “If it had of been overnight it would have been a shock to us. It would have freaked us out. You can see the bands that’ve become massive overnight and they’ve almost struggled to enjoy it. For us it has felt quite gradual, there’ve been lots of invisible little steps up so we haven’t really noticed the trajectory in certain ways. There are certain shows like Glastonbury or a big London headline show, which are emotionally significant.

"It’s quite a difficult emotion to put into words, but it’s quite difficult to come down off of those shows. You can’t just go back to your hotel room and brush it off. I think if you have overnight success, that's the bit that’s really difficult to deal with. That’s the bit that can mess with you. I’m glad we’ve had the time to take it in our stride.”

“Music for 18 Musicians” by Steve Reich

“I was played Steve Reich by some friends when I was still at school; they were older than me and in a band. I was sort of struggling with reconciling, I felt quite tribal about music and I didn’t know how I could feel okay about listening to rock music, pop music and classical music.

“I would go round to their house and listen to Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 Musicians” and then they would put on Missy Elliot, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and all sorts. It helped me to reconcile the feeling that being tribal about music wasn’t the way anymore. I moved to London when I was 18 for a little while and I used to listen to this on the tube. It was mesmerising and trance-like, and it really helped me through the morning commutes and rush hours.

“This piece of music was not only a part of a time where I felt more able to be a musical chameleon, but the piece of music itself is astonishing - both for the time it was written and how revolutionary it was for classical music. It’s avant-garde but also pleasurable to listen to at the same time, so “Music For 18 Musicians” wasn’t just an academic thing.

“Before I listened to it I was already starting to get interested in playing guitar with lots of staccato rhythms and with layering and looping sounds - not trying to play guitar in a conventional song writing, chord way. The amazing thing that Steve Reich does is use points of sound to build up these huge tapestries. I was thinking about that idea from another perspective, and when I heard Steve Reich it inspired me to go even further. “Music For 18 Musicians” really influenced the way that I thought about music for a long time.

“The piece is quite visual because of the way that the sounds and the voices layer – you feel like you’re going through tunnels. It’s got a huge amount of movement in it, it’s an incredible piece of music.”

“That’s Us/Wild Combination” by Arthur Russell

“There’s an incredible innocence and light to all of Arthur Russell’s music, but Calling Out of Contextin particular was the first album of his that I got into.

“He died in the early ‘90s, but he’s become far more popular since and achieved critical acclaim posthumously. There’s a record label that owns his masters and Calling Out of Contextwas the first compilation that they released after his death.

“I had some friends in Oxford who were listening to this record and who were banging on about it, but when I first heard the record it didn’t really click with me. I think something about the production was challenging for me to start with - it’s quite ’80s. He uses lots of drum machines and there was an element to the production that I had to break through before I could really appreciate it.

“Once it clicked, it became my favourite, and it’s probably in my top 3 albums of all time. “That’s Us/Wild Combination” is the beating heart of it in the middle of the album. It’s romantic and it’s a gorgeous piece of music, there’s no darkness in it at all. There’s lots of ocean imagery across the whole album, but with that song it feels like you’re in a convertible car driving along the Pacific highway with your partner.

“Arthur Russell is on his own for the most part with drum machines - what he makes is so singular.”

“Life’s a Beach!” by Studio

“Studio were a group that we discovered as a band when we were all living together in a house in Oxford. We were writing Total Life Forever at the time and I can’t remember who put us onto it, but I think maybe Jack discovered it, and then I picked up the vinyl.

“We didn’t have a TV in the house in Oxford, we just had a sofa, a stereo, and the designated writing room in the basement. So we’d be writing music downstairs and we’d come upstairs and listen to records all the time. Studio's album West Coast was a record that got absolutely caned in that house! It’s barely together to this day, but I’ve still got it though.

“It’s an incredible song and record, it focuses on this Swedish idea of what a Californian sound is like. The rhythms on it are great and it was definitely a big influence on Total Life Forever.”

“Confusion (Ma Afrika)” by Condry Ziqubu

“Sounds of Soweto is a record that my Mum would play in house - she’s from South Africa. The whole compilation is amazing and “Confusion (Ma Afrika)” is the soundtrack to when my Mum would drive me around when I was a little kid.

“There’s amazing guitar playing in this track. When I was growing up, my Mum didn’t ever play Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones or anything like that, she’d either play Chicago blues or South African music. I think that rhythmically this record and her music tastes influenced my guitar playing a lot.”

“Province” by TV On The Radio

“We made our first record with Dave Sitek from TV On the Radio. I’d heard “Wolf Like Me” because they used to play it at all the indie discos like White Heat, but beyond that I hadn’t really heard of them that much in the run up to working with him.

“Sitek was suggested to us as a producer and we had this incredibly intense phone call with him, where he told us “I’m going to re-educate and re-wire your brains when you come to New York.” It was really intense.

“I don’t know whether he’d told me to listen to Return to Cookie Mountain, or if I just found it on my own, but I heard it in the run-up before going to America and I fell in love with it, it’s one of my all-time favourite records.

“The track "Province" has David Bowie singing on it as well and it’s such a beautiful use of texture. As a band I think we learnt things from that song - about uses of space and also being courageous with music and the idea of taking risks - and I think "Province" really helped.

‘Province’ is definitely busier than songs of ours like "Spanish Sahara." In the music that we played early on in Antidotes, all of the instruments would be playing constantly and everything was very busy; we would basically want to fill every space in the song.

“After working with Dave Sitek we went on to write further material, such as some B-sides like “Glaciers” in between Antidotesand Total Life Forever and I think we became way more interested in the spaces in the songs and not filling everything – focusing on subtracting rather than adding.

“Production is the tail-end of the creative process for us. Usually either it starts out as loops, or Jimmy and I will write the cores of the tracks alone, and in isolation. The songs find their form when we’re jamming them as a group, that’s the point at which it usually becomes identifiably a Foals’ track.

“The production is psychological as much as it has to do with the sound. It’s coaxing the right performances or making the right emotional decisions about what the song should be, but the actual core of the music is defined at an earlier time.”

“Smokestack Lightnin’” by Howlin’ Wolf

“Again, this was a childhood record that was played around the house. His voice is unparalleled, no one else is going to sound like Howlin’ Wolf again.

“I love the fidelity of the old recordings and the way that they sound. The groove and the attitude of it - it’s got a lot of character. All of his songs have such a rebellious swagger to them. It’s a song that goes on backstage after the shows a lot, when we’re in a good vibe I’ll put that on backstage after a good gig.

“Smokestack Lightnin’” was another record that my Mum listened to, but again with a lot of that music I would have heard it at a certain point, but then forgotten about it. I rediscovered him and this track when I was probably about 19. My Mum still had the cassettes at home, but I hadn’t listened to Howlin’ Wolf for about a decade. When I started listening again it both had a feeling of rediscovery, but also a new lease of life.”

“Boss Kitty” by OXES

“OXES shows were just fucking bonkers.

“They were a band that I discovered through listening to John Peel, which I didn’t do that frequently, but for some reason I tuned into it one day and he had this band on playing a live session at Maida Vale. They had wireless guitars, and they were running in and out of the booths. John Peel said to his listeners “For all of you at home, you can’t see this, but they’re running into the control room, they’re running around the balconies.”

“After hearing their Maida Vale gig, I watched them perform live a couple of times and I think that OXES massively informed the way that we wanted Foal’s shows to be. We wanted our shows to be wild and chaotic, and we bought wireless packs because of OXES. We played with OXES, maybe not with Foals, but with the band that Jack and I were in beforehand – The Edmund Fitzgerald. 

“Boss Kitty” is an instrumental guitar track. This song might be a rock track, but it’s got a way of playing straight-up rock guitar and riffs but in a different and interesting way. “Boss Kitty” wasn’t a rock-band-by-numbers track, it was a subversion of big riffs. OXES write huge, almost stupid riffs sometimes, it’s a lot of fun.”

Interview || Maddy Smith || Line Of Best Fit

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Aesthetic History of FOALS

Antidotes ⏩⏩⏩⏩ ENSWBL

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Men's Pink Camp-collar Floral-print And Linen-blend Shirt

PAUL SMITH

$315

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Yannis at The Pageant

📷Libby Mckown

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Den Atelier

5.17.19

📷Blanca Ortiz de Pablo

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Yannis selects who hed rather tour with

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More than a decade on from debut album ‘Antidotes’ we still have no idea where to place Foals. Opening as a math rock group equally influenced by Don Cabellero and Kompakt, ‘Total Life Forever’ saw a firm embrace of electronic culture before the potent force of their live show drove ‘What Went Down’ to take on the dominant, muscular impact of Led Zep in their preening prime.

But that was four years ago. The departure of Walter Gervers spun the group once more, forcing them to upend expectations and analyse both the friendships within the band and their musical roles. Booking up a studio space in Peckham, Foals entered into a kind of South London version of Schrödinger's Box, whereby all possibilities existed at the same time.

What has emerged is a band re-defined, with ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1’ featuring some of the most thrilling, adventurous, visceral, caustic, and personal music of their career, a bold, bombastic, relentlessly daring album that upends expectations at every turn.

Album opener ‘Moonlight’ seeps out of the speakers with choral ambience, the filtered electronic sweeps recalling Brian Eno’s ‘An Ascent’ as the pastoral digitalism gradually comes into sharp focus. All gorgeous textures and bubbling production, it’s a diminutive but endlessly appealing composition, helping to erase expectations, razing old ground for new constructions.

This gentle introduction is torn apart by its deft segue into ‘Exits’, however; an extensive bass-heavy house jam with a Brutalist sense of sound, it’s club tropes re-purposed for a rock format, the bulging low end coupled with a Yannis Philappakis vocal that seethes and writhes with life.

‘White Onions’ is a taut, anthemic workout, Jack Bevan’s ectstatic drumming almost violently hurling Foals to a new level. ‘In Degrees’ is a frisky disco-tinged workout, with those endlessly undulating synths referencing clinical proto-techno jammers while Jimmy Smith’s clipped guitar line adds a tropical edge.

‘Syrups’ sketches out fresh space, the sound of Foals mapping out undiscovered territory with incredible confidence; ‘On The Luna’ is the closest we come to the guitar frenzy of old, the pulsating riff worth setting alongside Gang Of Four or even their own ‘Antidotes’.

Sonically daring, ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1’ nonetheless feels incredibly precise, with each step taken because it’s the right decision. Nothing is wasted, no idea is allowed to out-stay its welcome – even down to 44 second minuet ‘Surf Pt. 1’.

One of the reasons for the album’s completeness is the lyrical ability of Yannis Philippakis. Each word interacts perfectly with the music around it, while the album reflects the world it was made – holding a mirror up to our dytopian political landscape, it’s prescient ecological concerns are mirrored this constant exhortation to stand up, to stand out.

‘Sunday’ launches with glacial electronics, Yannis’ vocal shrouded in longing, yearning to “live again my friend”. But he embodies twin messages of panic and defiance as the electronics peak, singing: “Cities burn, we don’t give a damn cos we’ve got all our friends right here...”

Exploding into this searing, volcanic fusion of the organic and the digital, ‘Sunday’ is not only one of the best songs on the new album but one of the best songs Foals have ever put their name against. Precise, bold, and overwhelming, it’s a stunning tour de force, the sound of the band’s unspoken consensus hurling them into a fresh chapter.

Sombre finale ‘I’m Done With The World (And It’s Done With Me)’ feels like a cliffhanger, the energy of the album suddenly dissipating, the pace dropping. Little more than piano and vocals, it’s the sole moment of true intimacy on the record, the surging pace abruptly dipping to reveal this fractured yearning vocal.

An album of stunning ambition and outright defiance, ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost Part 1’ rips apart everything you know about Foals, a bold transformative work, as inspiring as it is urgent. Part Two drops in the Autumn. Truly, the only competition Foals have is themselves.

9/10