Pet Moon - Superposition

Coming out of an Oxford basement is the first rumbles of post Youthmovies material from Andrew Mears. Still in pretty rough, demo form the tracks on Pet Moon's Myspace sound typically adventurous and boundary bordering but with a new found pop lilt. Foals main man Yannis has described his long time friend Mears new music as being "Like really pop Phil Collins r’n’b but through his brain which makes everything warped" and invited Pet Moon out on tour with his band in October. Listen to Superposition below and get a glimpse of the twisted pop skills coming your way.

Read More »»

Top 10 Albums Of The Year So Far

In no particular order are:

The National - High Violet
LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
Los Campesinos - Romance Is Boring
Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo
Foals - Total Life Forver
Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts
Yeasayer - Odd Blood
These New Puritans - Hidden
Vampire Weekend - Contra
Dum Dum Girls - I Will Be

Honourable mentions: Wild Nothing, Perfume Genius, Villagers, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Crystal Castles, Toro Y Moi and Surfer Blood.

To sample tracks from these albums follow this link to a Spotify playlist, to read about more reccomended records click on the For The Record tab over there --->

Img: Will Harvey

Read More »»

Clash: Issue 51

Out now is the new issue of Clash. Make sure you get it as not only does it have my reviews of Kele Okereke, The Drums and Rusko's new albums but you can admire Yannis's beard from the comfort of your own home.

Read More »»

For the Record: May

So May is pretty much over bar the long weekend and it's easily been the best month for record releases of the year so far. So many of discs on the list below will almost certainly feature on my end of year list with Foals and LCD Soundsystem likely to be jostling for the top spot alongside the stunning opening statements from Male Bonding and Active Child.

Foals - Total Life Forever (Album of the Month)
LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening
The National - High Violet
jj - No3
Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts
The Dead Weather - Sea Of Cowards
Rolo Tomassi - Cosmology
Villagers - Becoming A Jackal
Active Child - Curtis Lane EP
Wild Nothing - Gemini
James Blake - CMYK.

Also recommended: Flying Lotus, Steve Mason, Little Girls, Holy Fuck, Trash Talk, Deftones, Kelis, Hole, Born Ruffians, Silver Columns.

Read More »»

Forever and Ever, Amen: Foals

Foals are one of the few bands to emerge in recent years who can truly say they have achieved success on their own terms. On paper they sound like a commercial disaster, singing songs about Andy Roddick in French or competitive maths competitions set to angled rhythms; yet in practise this most improbably theory resolves itself triumphantly. Where do Foals go from the success of ‘Antidotes’ though? Keen to move on and progress but knowing that they will have to reveal their previously hidden souls in order to so, the band took it back to basics and moved into a house in Oxford.

“Moving into that house was what made this album”. Says lead singer Yannnis Philipakis, a man who speaks almost entirely in pull quotes. “We wrote everything there and it allowed us to be naïve again. We could play at any time and didn’t have to be at a certain place at a certain time so in that sense it didn’t feel like a job at all, even though we knew we were working towards making a new record.”

Having amassed a wealth of new material whilst touring ‘Antidotes’ Foals suffered the polar opposite of writers block, if anything they had too much material. “We felt super ready to move onto something new. The strange thing about touring is that you’re playing things every night that are a year or two old and writing stuff all the time but not getting to air it. So when we finished all the touring for ‘Antidotes’ we basically had to play catch up with ourselves. So we went into recording this new one with a real hunger.” Says Yannis.



The results of this process are the brand new album ‘Total Life Forever’ released this week. Warmer and more expansive than its predecessor, the album sees Foals opening their arms and inviting the world to embrace them. The band see the differences as much more however, stating that their two albums thus have practically nothing to do with one another. “The thing with ‘Anitdotes’” says synth player Edwin Congreave, “is it’s a record. It was never designed to be the definitive statement of who we are, it’s just a singular moment of time in our lives. There is so much pressure on bands to produce something that has to represent them wholly but the way we see it is you make a record then you get to make another and if you’re lucky you get to go on and make more. If you look at an album as singular rather than in broader terms then you see that it’s just a small part of a multi-verse.”

This self-proclaimed ‘multi-verse’ saw the band living, Monkee’s style, together in Oxford and attempting to shed the awkward and abrasive skin they had developed on their first time out. Speaking of how the band previous were fraught with trying to achieve some notion of perfection says, “One of the things that Dave (Sitek, who the band worked with on eventually scrapped sessions for ‘Antidotes’) taught us was not to have such rigid roles within the band. By loosening up and not just being five guys behind their specific instruments it allowed us to spread out a bit and relax, making the whole thing a freer process.”

Something Edwin agrees with, “One thing we never want to lose is this gang mentality.” He says.

Total Life Forever is the sound of a band of brothers united and looking out on the world they have created. The sharp edges have been rounded and a truth has been discovered throughout. This shift in song writing style is something the band are keen to stress. “We used to think of songs very structurally but writing this album and even as far back as touring the first one we started to dismantle our music and move away from that idea”, says Yannis. “The patterns are still there in the new songs but they are more fluid than they once were for sure. It’s more about feeling than method.” Said feeling is what colours between the lines of Foals in 2010, from the dance floor fillers of ‘This Orient’ and ‘Miami’ to the open wounds of ‘Spanish Sahara’ it’s all still Foals as we know them, only now the angles are provided by emotion rather than guitars.



More than anything Foals hope you take Total Life Forever at face value and forget any tags that may have previously been attached to them. “At one point we were math-rock and we were supposed to be afrobeat and nu-rave and sound like Bloc Party and all sorts. Says Yannis when discussing the way the media has treated his band in the past. “It’s all just words and if people base their opinion of us on some spiel they read somewhere then they’re missing the point. If we make an album and you can’t decipher exactly what kind of band we are then we’ve succeeded.”

You get the feeling that if Foals can unite the nations youth in arms with songs as obtuse as ‘Hummer’ then the flesh they’ve added to their bones on Total Life Forever can only see the band get even bigger. What remains utmost in the bands mind however is that they do it on their own terms, “We definitely feel that we shouldn’t have to compromise to somebody else’s static idea of what we should be. It’s unfair of people to expect bands to repeat themselves and we feel that we have done what we always said we’d do which is to progress.”

Originally on Gigwise.com

Read More »»

Best Songs of 2010 so far...

Three months in, these are my favourite songs of 2010 thus far. I've probably forgotten about 100 but so be it. There are Youtube links for the ones that are not on this SPOTIFY PLAYLIST. Yes, a few are from 2009, no I don't care.

In no particular order...

Foals - Spanish Sahara (Youtube)
Gorillaz - Melancholy Hill
These New Puritans - Three Thousand (Youtube)
Gil Scott Heron - Me And The Devil
Best Coast - When I'm With You (Youtube)
Toro Y Moi - Blessa
Yeasayer - O.N.E
Hot Chip - I Feel Bonnie
Late Of The Pier - Best In Class
SBTRKT - Soundboy Shift
Summer Camp - Ghost Train (Youtube)
Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun
Yuck - Georgia (Youtube)
Jay Electronica - Exhibit C (Youtube)
Los Campesinos - Straight In At 101
Caribou - Odessa
Oberhofer - Away Frm U (Youtube)

img: Yves Drillet

Read More »»

Foals - This Orient

Brand new Foals. Again. First official single from Total Life Forever (artwork below) 'This Orient' sees the band making some of the cleanest and most direct sounds to date. Pure and straight it sounds like a lost Hot Chip song complete with twinkling electronics and childlike sense of romance. Check it out below, let me know what you think.

*Tuesday morning - There is a video now!

Read More »»

I Strongly Supect This Will Be My Album Of The Year

'This Orient' gets its first airing on Radio 1 tonight after 7pm. Check here later for all the details.

Read More »»

Foals - Spanish Sahara

Lots of Foals business tonight. The band debuted their brand new song 'Spanish Sahara' on Radio 1 and will also be giving a free remix away via their website.



Foals - Spanish Sahara (Mount Kimbie Remix) by BoringByTheSea

Oxford quintet Foals' much anticipated second album Total Life Forever will be released on May 10^th, preceded on May 3rd by debut single ‘This Orient’.

I’m the fury in your head, I’m the fury in your bed, I’m the ghost in the back of your head.

Read More »»

Foals- Titan Arum

So Neu!, y'know them right? They are currently du jour and being name checked in every 'Primary Colours' review around, so it's timely then that a compilation of the bands work is being released.

This is no ordinary Greatest Hits however, Neu! are so influential that the cream of todays crop have contributed cover versions to the forthcoming 'Brand Neu!' compilation and this means stuff from LCD Soundsystem, School Of Seven Bells and Foals amongst many others.

Below is a stream of Foals doing Titan Arum from 'Brand Neu!' which is available on May 11th. You can listen to more Neu! on Spotify here or go to the Brand Neu! Myspace here.

Read More »»

Telepathe- 'Devil's Trident' (XIII Foals Mix)

Foals drummer Jack Bevan has got his blistered hands on Brooklyn banshees Telepathe and turned them into techno house behemoths. His remix of 'Devil's Trident' is a seven minute tour de force equipped with juggernaught beats, howling sax and droning, hypnotic vocal loops.

You can hear it here- Listen

Read More »»

New Foals Music

Yesterday (Jan 4th) Foals main-man Yannis put a blog on the bands Myspace page talking about the new albums progress. According to him the album is sounding

"sounding less and less surf the colder it gets. " and that he is "willing to buy sunshine off any friendly mammals in the Southern Hemisphere"

He also kindly uploaded some of the half formed guitar loops he has been working on ahead of the full band sessions due to commence later this year. You can find the links below.

A Future Dub
A Future Dub Deux
XCFAVA

Read More »»

Album Of The Year- Foals: Antidotes

FULL REVIEW
You have to be confident to leave the two songs people know you for off your debut album as well as ditching a Dave Sitek production job. ‘Antidotes’ though is the sound of a band that controls their own destiny. At no point does the Oxford quintet’s album let us down, from the immediacy of ‘Cassius’ to the emotive ‘Red Socks Pugie’ through a myriad of idiosyncrasies this is one of the finest debuts a British band has made in years.

'Cassius'

Read More »»

Single Of The Year #4- Foals: Red Socks Pugie

Most people love 'Cassius' or 'Hummer' but this has always been my favourite Foals song. I remember the first time I ever heard it. It was at 'Beached' a festival in Scarborough that Foals found themselves on the bill for in the Summer of 2007. Playing to a massively indifferent crowd they completely owned the stage and introduced Red Socks as a new song. Immediately you I understoof what Foals were about, expansive, experimental and romantic. Every time I have seen Foals since this is always the highlight, the 5 minutes and 8 seconds this songs lives in are about as good as a young band can sound.

Read More »»

4 Videos I love- September 18th

The Black Ghosts- 'Repetition Kills You'

Ladyhawke- 'Dusk Till Dawn'

Foals- 'Olympic Airways'

Crystal Castles- 'Crimewave'

Crystal Castle Crimewave
Uploaded by Differentrecordings

Read More »»

Foals- 'Antidotes'

The most exciting album of 2008 has arrived already in the shape of ‘Antidotes’; a minimalist punk funk techno collision that takes in influences from Steve Reich by way of Q & Not U. From the blog world to the broadsheets, Foals have had everyone who encounters them foaming at the mouth for well over a year now. Five comfortably middle class, highly educated boys making music that has as much to do with getting pissed and pulling as The Pigeon Detectives know about splitting the atom. Indeed, it’s not normally this way. Looking back over the past ten years or so, music this distinctive does not achieve broad exposure and love. So it’s a testament to the growing musical palette of the British youth and of course Foals themselves that ‘Antidotes’ is not just the most technically capable and musically ambitious album so far in 2008, but also the most likely to make a new band on an indie label absolutely fucking enormous.
So what does it sound like? The most important thing to say is that it is almost stubbornly uncompromising. Yannis Phillipakis and co. clearly feel no need to bow to commercial pressure, in actual fact it seems as though they sprint away from it at full speed. Famously, both ‘Hummer’ and ‘Mathletics’, tracks that brought Foals to the public’s attention are absent on ‘Antidotes’. It might seem like a strange move but listening to the album it’s hard to see where exactly they would have fitted in. The aforementioned songs’ tight beats and inter playing guitars run through the album but the pace of them is totally at odds with the slow emergence of tracks like ‘Electric Bloom’ with its pained screams of “It’s just another hospital” over a sparse musical landscape.
One of the strangest but most gratifying things about Foals is how they’re indebted to pop music as much as they are to post rock and the much feted, but not apparent here, Math Rock. Many of their gigs over the summer began with a blast of Gwen Stefani and suitably the melodies of the popular mainstream music are laced in every strand of ‘Antidotes’ DNA. That’s not to say these melodies are obvious, they are hidden under layers of bleeps, clipped riffs, beats and feedback - peel back the layers of ‘Antidotes’ and you find a new level every time. The album opens with ‘The French Open’ a sort of tag team battle between Yannis and Jimmy Smith’s guitars and Edwin Congreaves synths. It’s the perfect introduction; it’s techno for indie kids, the technical elements of one with the heart and soul of the other.
Then comes Foals’ most straight forward track ‘Cassius’ (easily the best song about the fall of Rome ever written), a relentless disco banger that heralds the introduction of the NYC Collective Antibalas. Much was made of Foals recruiting TV On the Radio’s Dave Sitek as producer and his introduction of a brass group to Foals dark brooding music. Well it works, in parts. This is not a Mark Ronson style “drown out the lack of ideas with a trumpet” move- Antibalas back up the heaviest parts of the album, giving it more depth and show the trumpet can be played in an almost punk style.
It seems easy and even banal to compare the two, but ‘Antidotes’ is the natural successor the Klaxons ‘Myths Of The Near Future’ in terms of diverse alternative British music to be proud of. Both albums have clear dance floor stand out tracks (If ‘Red Socks Pugie’ isn’t THE single of 2008 then we are in for a good year) and the more pure and unadulterated end of their respective influences. Where Klaxons looked to early 90’s rave and the latter day electro clash Foals are more indebted to the likes of Sweep The Leg Johnny and hardcore punk. These ideas of smashing the rules and building them back up piece by piece are clear for all to see on the second half of ‘Antidotes’ which contains the much more bare ‘Heavy Water’ and previous B-Sides ‘Two Steps, Twice’ and ‘Big Big Love (Fig 2.)’. These largely instrumental songs are where most of the fly by night fans will depart and find fans in the people that would normally spit on an NME cover star.
The album ends with ‘Tron’ a conglomeration of all the ideas thrown into the pot over the previous 42 minutes. Backing vocals, the tête-à-tête of guitars, brass, synths and Yannis’s typically abstract lyrics all combine to create a cohesive backdrop that showcases these five men’s enormous potential and the acres of space they seem able to create in order to grow into. ‘Antidotes’ is not a flavour of the week album, it’s the opening opus of a band who are here to stay. Ambitious, exciting and utterly divine, they have shown that at the end of the day brilliant music will out.
'Balloons'

Foals - Balloons
Uploaded by subpoprecords

Read More »»