Foal if you think it's over

Spreadeagled glumly on a couch in his band’s gloomy Oxfordshire rehearsal space, Foals’ Yannik Philippakis is cautiously rolling a word around his mouth: “eccentric”.
“We’re the first real generation, people our age, to have grown up with the internet in a proper way,” he says of his group’s frantic, genre-busting sound – a template which, in the UK, has been quickly dubbed ‘new eccentric’.
“You know, with iPods and cheap airfares and the idea that we’re living in a more multicultural society – well, it’s influencing music in a very profound way.”

A pale young man with standard-issue sideways haircut and a meandering conversational technique, Philippakis fits the stereotype of the footloose art-rocker. He projects tortured-frontman moodiness, converses in frequently indecipherable mutterings and doesn’t do the eye contact thang. If this sounds like a schtick, then it’s one that has paid off richly. Unheard of six months ago, Foals have vaulted the fence and are hurtling towards the big time – a sixth place finish in the BBC Sound of 08 poll (topped by neo-soul princesses Adele and Duffy) has seen them hailed as one of the most exciting new acts in Britain – remarkable for a group with such an avowedly uncommercial sound.
“We have very few friends that listen only to indie music,” says Yannick. “In a way, we’re a product of the idea that you shouldn’t restrict yourself to a single genre. One minute you can listen to folk music, the next you’re at a techno night. We’re not particularly interested in guitar music but that’s all we know how to do, that’s what our background is. We’re kind of retarded musically. We are using the tools we know, which are the tools of a rock band.”
The singer has little love for much of modern British rock. He’s openly disdainful of bands who wish only to purloin from the past – if your sole ambition is to rip off Joy Division and The Beatles, then Yannick doesn’t understand why you need to exist.
“I think it’s a problem,” he says of UK music, “but it’s something that will change. We were never really brought up with that music. My Dad doesn’t know who Jimi Hendrix is. We weren’t brought up in the tradition where there were mods and rockers, where you had to fit in.”
He sees Foals as classic outsiders: growing up in Oxford – “a musical backwater” – the band were spared the horizon-narrowing influences of British scenster-ism. Coming from Oxford, he says, was like coming from nowhere.
“There’s not a big tradition of pop music in Oxford. It’s not like we come from somewhere where there was a musical legacy, somewhere like Manchester. In Oxford, there isn’t a great deal of pop culture.”
Still, the city seeped the music in other ways.
“Oxford’s a very weird place,” Yannick reflects. “For one thing, you have quite a strong division between town and university – town and gown as they call it. It’s very multicultural as well, because all the students are coming and going. It’s not as quaint as people think. It’s quite a weird place, architecturally, like something out of [Mervyn Peake’s gothic classic] Gormenghast. It’s pretty psychedelic in a scary way – if you ever do mushrooms in Oxford you know you’re not going to have a good time!”
Foals formed while four of the band were studying at Oxford. Yannick dropped out of his English literature course after a year in order to devote himself to the group full time.
“I didn’t really make friends at Oxford,” he rues. “It’s not as posh as people think but the people that are at Oxford are just incredibly driven, incredibly competitive. I ended up in my room writing Foals lyrics. Leaving wasn’t a massive wrench. We’re not interested in becoming doctors or lawyers or whatever you do. I just hate working. You know, we’re chronically lazy. The band is an excuse to sit around and write music.”
Antidotes, Foals’ clattering, snarling, debut was recorded in Brooklyn, under the gaze of TV On The Radio’s David Sitek. As well as their shared anti-commercial streak, the band bonded with Sitek over a passion for outsider pop.
“My mum’s from South Africa – she used to play a lot of South African stuff,” Yannick reveals. “You end up discovering artists such as Fela Kuti. A lot of the records we like, such as Remain In Light by Talking Heads or The Flowers Of Romance by Public Image Ltd have an Afrobeat influence. The core of what music really is has a lot do with dancing and your heartbeat and the idea that, if you really stripped music down to what it fundamentally is, it’s about communicating through rhythm. Afrobeat seems very fresh and alien, in a good way, and it’s a challenge for us to try and incorporate stuff that is incredibly far away from where we are. The difference between Oxford and The Congo is quite big you know.”

Antidotes is out on Transgressive. Foals play The Academy, Dublin, on April 20.