Foals Interview

Wanna Be in Our Gang?

Geeky gang of five, Foals like to think of themselves and their entourage as one big extended family who openly communicate with their fans through their art. For their upcoming tour they're bringing loads of the clan from back home along for support and general partying. We spoke to front-man Yannis Philippakis about what makes for the best live gig, the new direction they're taking, gang mentality and, er, shooting each other...

You've got a new album lined up, produced by the infamous Dave Sitek, tell us a bit about it.
He's [Dave Sitek] fucking amazing! ... In my mind he's somebody that really produces your record in the sense that recording with him is like putting all your songs through some sort of effect pedal...he just does wild stuff!...We recorded drums out in alleyways in Brooklyn...it's an intense cool experience with him ... The record's got a really afro beat feel to it and we used a lot of brass musicians on it, it's got a warm feeing to the record...There's only one synth on the whole record, everything else is on piano. It's got a slightly more classic feel to it I guess.

Which elements make for the perfect gig?
It's basically 90% the crowd. We could play anywhere and if the people there are receptive and they're not too cool for school, then we enjoy playing anywhere ... it's not like we particularly relish in the idea of playing big venues where you have two metres in between you and the crowd ... that's the kind of stuff that starts to dilute the experience of what live music should be about ... We never walk off and go...'Good lick on song two man', we'll only ever come off and go, 'Fuck, that crowd was wicked!' ... I think what makes the perfect show is a good crowd and a lack of interference between us and the crowd.

Who's supporting?
It's cool 'cause we got to pick our friends to come on tour with us as well this time ... it's nice that we got to bring some of our crew along. We've got Metronomy and a band called Great Eskimo Hoax ... the whole kind of thing with our band is that we have a big family, we've got the same guy that does all our artwork and everything's very much in our very tight-knit group ... It's like a big kind of extended hip hop family – it's like bringing the hip hop mentality to indie, without the bling. We've got more weapons though!

Do you have any surprises planned for your forthcoming tour?
Yeah we'll probably just pull a load of guns out and just start shooting each other or something. Maybe throw some Roman toga theme parties or maybe some people will clap when we play some songs.