Foals get funky

Oxford quintet Foals change their skin for the follow-up to Antidotes

02 July 2009 - Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis says they’ve been embracing the music they used to dislike while making their sophomore album.

When asked what influences have been informing their new material, the singer told 6 Music: "We’ve kind of opened up to more funk and dub and stuff. We don’t really listen to that much rock music at the moment."

Adding: "We’re listening to a lot of hip-hop, stuff like Donald Byrd and some long disco edits, Donna Summer, James Brown, stuff that before we would have always felt was too part of the canon.

"Basically, everything that we didn’t like before, we’ve got into now."

Foals go underground

During recent months, the boys have barricaded themselves into their basement studio at their house in Oxford, where they all live together, to work on the follow up to 2008's Antidotes.

They played an intimate show in London yesterday (1 July) to warm up for their appearance supporting the reunited Brit-pop legends Blur tonight, but said it’s been a welcome break being off the road.

"Basically, everything that we didn't like before, we've got into now."
Yannis Philippakis

"When we tour we behave badly, so it’s just kind of destructive. I really like the studio as an environment. I find it almost a sanctified place away from the rest of the world.

"I like just being cordoned off from everything. I think we all do," said Yannis.

‘Being a chameleon’

He revealed the album should reach us in early 2010 and admitted they don’t want to be defined by the sound of their debut.

"We just like to change our skin. We don’t really want to have a prescribed boundary of what we feel musically is ok," explained Yannis. "I think the older we get the more we feel open to everything and particularly stuff with groove.

"With a lot of funk records, it’s kind of seen as being un-cool in some way, and it’s just a challenge for us. We see it as being a chameleon basically."

When they wrote Antidotes, the band members were around the ages of 19 and 20.

Yannis said it’s inevitable their sound has moved on: "It’s been a few years and I think we feel differently about music and about ourselves.

"I think the new stuff is more considered and we’re put more thought into keeping it free, because before we used to control stuff to the point of choking it."

Georgie Rogers