‘I don’t feel tied down to the band’

When the late, great Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen arrived at his Paris studio in December 2016, he seemed unsure of the stranger with the wild hair and beard setting up in the live room. Dennis something? From some band called The Foals?

“He was smaller than I imagined, quieter and more introverted,” says Yannis Philippakis of meeting Allen for the first time. “I interpreted him as cranky, but it was early, it was December, and he was probably thinking, ‘Who’s this guy that’s come off the Eurostar?’”

This meeting led to the creation of Lagos Paris London, a long-awaited EP from Yannis & the Yaw, released this week. Their music, nurtured from Foals’ roots, embraces Afrobeat and highlife elements more directly. In tracks like “Rain Can’t Reach Us,” Philippakis’s brooding guitar complements Allen’s earthy polyrhythms. “Clementine” features Allen’s jazz-funk swing that enhances Philippakis’s sun-kissed evocation of an obsessive romance.

Allen, who had drummed for Gorillaz, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, among others, was no stranger to cool collaborations. Philippakis was particularly drawn to Allen’s instinctive rhythms, having grown up listening to his South African mother’s Afrobeat tunes. When Foals shared a house in Oxford, Philippakis filled it with the sounds of Fela Kuti. The connection was instantaneous when they finally played together.

“One of the most exciting musical moments of my life was setting up my amp and hearing Tony quietly start drumming next to me,” Philippakis recalls. “It was thrilling. We produced three tracks in that session. It felt like a dance between the guitar and the drums.”

Philippakis is now enjoying a period of relative solitude. Foals paused after 2022’s seventh album Life Is Yours, the climax of 15 years of relentless touring. Every day, Philippakis walks to his studio in Peckham to work on music for Alexander Zeldin’s theatre production The Other Place, enjoying the slower pace he adopted from Allen.

“We toured so much that by the end of Life Is Yours I just wanted to be home,” he says. “Working with Tony, I learned to wait for the right moment to record rather than rushing.”

Their sessions also involved some fun distractions. “Pot during the day, whisky at night,” Philippakis grins. “[Allen] taught me how to pilfer whisky from studio budgets. He was mischievous and fun, very young at heart.” He regrets that they never toured together. “We would have caused havoc.”

Allen passed away on April 30, 2020, from an aneurysm in Paris at age 79. “I couldn’t believe it,” Philippakis says. “I felt he would be around forever.” His main regret is not finishing the project sooner, allowing Foals work to delay it. “We thought we had more time. But working with him was something magical. It feels precious.”

Philippakis finally completed and released the tracks as a tribute. Yannis & the Yaw, including Allen’s Parisian players, are set to perform four shows across Northern Europe in September, ending at a sold-out show in Camden Koko.

Amid celebrations, the performances will also carry a serious undertone. “Heavy Love” begins with Allen’s swampy percussion as Philippakis whispers about “chasing the dragon.” He clarifies, “It’s a drug-taking song, but not about addiction. Just those intense experiences with substances when you’re young.” He stresses, “No, I haven’t had heroin problems.”

Allen encouraged Philippakis to sing about the discontent during the 2016 Paris refuse strikes, resulting in the highlife carnival track “Under the Strikes.” Philippakis remembers, “I was literally dodging football-sized rats amid the trash.”

“Walk Through Fire” pays tribute to Allen’s revolutionary work with Fela Kuti, immersing listeners in an urban riot. “Writing the lyric, I envisioned old black-and-white news footage of Sixties unrest,” Philippakis explains.

The narrow escape France recently had from a far-right government and the racist riots in the UK leave Philippakis concerned yet hopeful for the UK’s political future. “Common sense and clear-headedness will win. The extreme right in the UK is more fractured and less organized,” he says.

Philippakis is dismayed by the fraying edges of society, citing issues like river pollution and energy company price gouging. “The idea of the UK being fair and above board seems totally rotten on the inside,” he laments.

As for the future, The Yaw serves as a framework for Philippakis’s potential collaborations with other musicians, inspired by Malian guitar music or his Greek heritage. He mentions incorporating recordings of his father singing folk songs in the Sixties.

Foals are enjoying their brief hiatus before working on their eighth album, which Philippakis hopes will be their defining record. “I want to balance experimentation with hooks,” he says, amazed that this “mad family” remains harmonious as its 20th year approaches.

The Yaw, for Philippakis, represents expanding his creative horizons. “I want to be creative until the end, and to do that, I need to explore different fronts,” he says. “I just want to be wildly creative with my time here.”

Of all he learned from Tony Allen, perhaps the greatest lesson was to seize musical opportunities while they last.

‘Yannis & The Yaw featuring Tony Allen’ is out on 30 August via Transgressive Records

Source: The Independent