Reading Festival interviews

Now signed to Transgressive Records, the minimalist dance outfit are making their Reading Festival debut on the Carling Stage at 4pm on Saturday 25 August.

BBC Berkshire's Linda Serck chats to frontman Yannis Philippakis about how the band feels playing the world famous festival as well as slightly more oddball subjects for a music interview, including whether he's the Kim and Aggie of the music scene, guitars mimicking insects and his love of US tennis ace Andy Roddick.

Listen to the full interview here or read an excerpted transcript below:

Let's rewind right back to the beginning - how did Foals get together, when did you form and so forth.

"We'd been playing around various house parties and stuff. It was probably May last year when all five of us got together.

And this was all in Oxford was it?

"Yeah and we had some help from friends who run Truck Festival so there was a bit of back-slapping there, and then we booked this tour and recorded this demo on the cheap and sent it out and ended up getting signed to Transgressive Records, which is our nesting place.

"We just wanted to make a weird pop band because we didn't feel there was enough weird pop music being made."

Well we'll come on to that because you do seem quite the character Yannis for the following reasons:

First of all, I hear that the name Foals is an inspiration from your surname?

"Well, strictly, that came after we'd called ourselves Foals. I was chatting to my father back in Greece and I was telling him about this band that was draining all my money and my time.

"He brought it to my attention that my surname is Phillipakis: 'phil is 'friend' or 'lover', 'ypos' is 'horse' and 'akis' is the diminuitive of that, so it's 'little friend of horses'.

Now there's a coincidence!

"It seemed like fate you know!"

The second pointer then, on your new single Mathletics, I read that the high-pitched guitars is actually supposed to be mimicking insects?

"Yeah! It's just like in my head what I think insects would sound like if they were singing like crickets or wasps, or some sort of arthropod with wings."

Thirdly then, a certain obsession with an American tennis hero, Andy Roddick...

"Andy Roddick, he breaks my heart, I can't believe what happened this year in Wimbledon!

"My crush on Roddick is fading quickly because he's never winning anything."

And finally your obsession with sonic tidiness, now I've never heard anything like that before, are you the Kim and Aggie of the music world?

"I'd like to think of myself as about as far away as possible from Kim and Aggie as possible."

What about Anthea Turner?

"Even further! No, these things get taken out of context. I like things that are considered and that's put together structurally in a way that I think that is attention to detail.

"It's tidiness, if you can the construction of stuff and it makes sense to your ears then that's sonic tidiness.

"It's just a reaction against these bands that just loosely play three chords and then get into the top ten and that for me isn't that interesting."

Now you're playing the Reading Festival on Saturday - have you been as a punter?

"No never, I don't think any of us have. We're not big festival people at all. We're just pretty grouchy so we just stay at home.

"But it's going to be really good, to play is what every band dreams of.

"I'm really excited already and I think we're going to be really nervous."

Because the crowd's going to be so much bigger?

"Well because it's Reading, we've been doing quite a few festivals the last couple of weeks and I'm sure some of the crowds are going to be similar, but just because it's Reading - it's got such a big weight behind it, it's not just another festival, it's 'Reading' Festival, but that's a good thing and hopefully we'll play well and everyone will like it and we'll get a round of applause."

If Reading Festival wasn't enough, you're heading back a month later to the infamous Fez Club, how would playing an intimate setting compare to playing the Reading Festival?

"It's kind of more laidback that we've done a lot more small intimate shows so we'll nail it and the intensity and the energy will be much more direct. There's something so primal about playing to a small amount of people and having everyone going wild on stage and off."

Details of Foals's Fez Club gig here: