Music

Foals look ahead to new album with "early '90s jungle" sound

by Ciaran Thompson

Foals’ sophomore record Total Life Forever has received considerable acclaim, not just for being a good followup to 2008’s Antidotes, but for how much their music has evolved in such a short time. After being on the road in support of the album, the Oxford band are looking forward to heading back to England to begin writing a new record.

“We have some instrumental bits and bobs lying around. This is the last tour we’re doing for Total Life Forever and then we’ll go home and start writing in earnest,” singer/guitarist Yannis Philippakis reveals to AUX. “We’ll make an album. I think we still like the idea of trying to scalp whole bits of work into an album format for now.”

“Some songs come together very quickly and others will be laboured over for months so there’s no template on how to do it,” he explains. “We almost try to avoid the idea of going in with a preconceived concept of what we should be doing and where we should be going. I think we’ve learned it’s kind of futile in many ways trying to control the process in advance of it happening.”

While Antidotes strayed into dance-punk, Total Life Forever sounds a little more subdued albeit still being danceable. According to Philippakis, their new music sounds like “early ’90s jungle” thus far. There’s been no mention of when we’ll get to hear new Foals material, however according the singer, “it would be nice if it came together quickly and wasn’t too agonized.”