Horse Stories

Oxford quintet Foals have made something of a quantum leap with their second record Total Life Forever. Expanding on the syncopated white funk/Krautrock/post-punk remit of their debut, the new album is a panoramic and multi-layered affair, described alternately as “tropical prog” and “a dream of an eagle dying” by its makers. The recording necessitated the band’s decamping to Svenska Gramofon studios in Gothenburg at the suggestion of their producer, Clor man Luke Smith – although, as frontman Yannis Philippakis and keyboardist Edwin Congreave are at pains to point out prior to soundchecking for their Heineken Green Spheres show in the Dublin Academy, the process had as much to do with sequestering themselves away from the early Swedish winter as much as soaking up the atmosphere.

“We had some discussions with Luke,” Yannis explains, “and we wanted somewhere that would be an immersive experience. This place was built by musicians for musicians, and you could live in the studio. It had a lot of old reverbs and just felt like quite a special space, it didn’t feel like a corporate studio, it felt quite virginal.”
“It doesn’t sound like a space in Sweden,” adds Edwin. “The doors were closed most of the time.”
“Firmly closed,” adds Yannis. “I think it’s our own space.”
If anything, Yannis says, the album’s genetic code was formulated back in Foals’ group house in Oxford, where the songs were written.
“That itself was quite a private experience,” he says. “I feel this album, much more than the last one (2008’s Antidotes) is very internal, private, very little contact with the outside world. The material itself didn’t, and we had less, it was definitely much more of an isolated thing.
“Oxford feels like a capsule, a lot of the architecture’s obviously quite archaic. In a way you can get away with being fanciful and imagine things. You can to an extent walk around the city and ignore... I don’t know how to put it exactly, but there’s something about it that allows you to live in your head. You can avoid certain things quite easily.”
The Manics, Radiohead, PJ Harvey... artists who grow up in a place that feels remote, or at least removed from the hub, tend to originate their own grand visions – which often turn out to be quirkier or more contrary than the noises emanating from the metropolis. Foals are graduates of an arts lab lineage that stretches back through Bowie, Roxy and The Beatles. Both Yannis and Edwin studied English at Oxford, although they maintain they received their musical education elsewhere.
“I really enjoyed reading, I liked literature,” says Yannis, “but we were in bands all through school, it wasn’t really a thing that emanated from university. We were influenced by all kinds of people living in Oxford. I don’t think the college environment either aided or distracted.”
Edwin: “Oxford University sort of discourage extra-curricular activities. There isn’t really a musical scene, except for choral things.”
Yannis: “When I was growing up I was attracted to a group of guys that moved into Oxford called Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies, and they had a big influence on our musical development.”
Speaking of musical development, Foals possess the kind of chops more often associated with graduates of the US hardcore underground, acts like Black Flag or Bad Brains, who spent as much time absorbing Ayler, Coleman or Coltrane as the Pistols. And as tracks like ‘Blue Blood’ and ‘Miami’ testify, there’s something immensely satisfying about hearing a band play the crap out of their instruments.
“I dunno, I always think we’re kind of lazy,” Yannis protests. “In terms of technical prowess, it’s the five of us together that makes it. I think as individual players we’re fine, we’re competent, we’re good, but none of us are virtuoso players or are classically trained or anything. But we lived together when we were writing the record, which helped, and we’d also just come off a two-and-a-half year period of touring and recording, so anything other than a sort of new telepathy would be a shame. It’s expected that we should be able to communicate instinctively to an extent, and I think often the best stuff, the stuff that’s easiest and most pleasant to write, has as little conscious effort as possible. It’s definitely a big release, having a creative outlet like this that we can invest all of our attention into every day. It’s a gift.”

Total Life Forever is out now on Transgressive. Foals return to Ireland in September for the Electric Picnic.