The New Cue #403 August 5: Yannis Philippakis
Good morning,
Welcome to your regular Monday edition, AKA the one all the freeloaders like. Today we’ve got a chat with Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis, who tells Niall all about his long-awaited project with the great, late Tony Allen which finally sees the light of day later this month.
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Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Yannis Philippakis
At the end of the month, Yannis & The Yaw will release the EP Lagos Paris London, a collection of songs that sees Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis team up with late Afrobeat legend Tony Allen. Sessions began back in 2016 but were uncompleted when Allen died in 2020, Philippakis getting the tracks to the finish line with Allen’s trusted team of collaborators in Paris over the past couple of years. It makes for an excellent melding of sounds, a union of Allen’s restless, toppling grooves and Philippakis’ knack for dexterous rock riffs and yearning vocals. Last week, Niall spoke to Yannis over Zoom about how rehearsals for Yannis & The Yaw’s live shows are coming along (see here for ticket and date details), his favourite memories of working with Allen, where the Yannis & The Yaw project could go next and more…
Hello Yannis, how’s it going?
Yeah, good. I got back last night after being away for two weeks, so it’s one of those where the hot water isn’t working, the internet doesn’t work, the house smells like bins…
Haha. I saw some videos you put up from rehearsals. How are they going?
It was loosely rehearsing, it wasn’t full band. I’ve been going over to Paris semi-regularly now for a few years, obviously to finish the record and since then to explore how to do the live show because without Tony being around, we have to be thoughtful about how to do it. We’ve also got to create more material for the show, because the EP is only about 20 minutes long.
Like an early Foals show!
Yeah, exactly. It’s like when we first headlined Brixton and we played for 40 minutes, the shortest ever headline set at Brixton Academy.
I was at that gig. It wasn’t just that you didn’t have loads of material, it was that you played the songs you had really quickly too.
The nerves controlled the tempo that day.
So have you cracked that nut in terms of what you’re going to do for the Yannis & The Yaw live shows?
We jammed a bit with this Malian guitarist so we’ve got some extra material. We’re going to do some improvised sections, extend certain sections, jam out bits of the songs that people know, and then we might do a couple of Tony Allen covers as well.
We’ve got an amazing band. We’ve got Dave Okumu on guitar. We’ve got Seye Adelekan, who plays bass for lots of people and is the live bass player for Gorillaz and who’s really awesome. I’ve wanted to play with him for a long time. Then the Vincents, Vincent Taurelle and Vincent Taeger, who were the producers and musicians on the EP so I’m quite familiar with playing with those two. And Kit [Monteith, a member of Foals’ live band] on percussion. As a collective, we’ve never played together so there’s definitely a big question mark about how it’s going to come together. But it’s exciting because I have absolute faith that the other guys are going to come and elevate all of the music. There’s some nerves, I want it to do justice to the EP and to Tony and for it not to suck.
Who’s playing drums?
Vincent Taeger. He’s perfect for it. Tony really admired a couple of younger drummers. One of them is Femi from Ezra Collective and the other one was Vincent. Vincent had worked on other Tony Allen records and had been in Tony’s orbit for a long time and knew him intimately to the point where when we were mixing the record, both the Vincents could tell me exactly the frequency that Tony would want his kick drum mixed at and things like that, they know it so intimately that they almost can translate what Tony would have wanted. Because Vincent was in on the sessions, it just felt right.
I love the EP. What’s the full timeframe from when you started it to release?
How many years? I mean, do I have to say?
Yeah.
It’s probably like six or seven years, or maybe the better part of a decade. I think we first got together in 2017, I’m not that good with dates.
I read 2016.
It might well have been 2016.
What’s it like living with a piece of music like that for so long?
For a while, it was OK, because I quite liked to pull out this little trump card late at night at parties when everyone’s playing their own music and I’d be like, ‘Oh, have you heard this stuff I did with Tony Allen?’ and whack it on at three in the morning. It would most often be heard in that kind of setting.
I didn’t want that chapter to close, so part of the reason why I think we didn’t hurry to finish the tracks was that we enjoyed the collaboration with each other. And also, it wasn’t something that was driven by a record label or by an idea of completion. It was an exploration with Tony and we enjoyed jamming with each other. I think that we would have probably done a whole album had things turned out differently. We were enjoying each other’s company, we enjoyed playing so there was a part of it which was pleasant that there was this material bubbling away on the back hob for a long time while he also made other records and I was focusing on Foals. The problem with that obviously was that we didn’t get to complete it while he was alive so that’s the bit that’s the bit where now there’s a feeling of slight remorse that we just didn’t finish it.
But in terms of like having the songs living alongside you unfinished, it wasn’t something that was aggravating to me. I quite enjoyed the fact that they were just there in the ether but it does now feel awesome to have it done and have it out. I think that that needed to happen once Tony passed away. They needed to be completed.
Thinking back to when you first went to Paris to meet Tony in the studio, how did it go in terms of what you were expecting versus what actually happened?
I didn’t really know what to expect, it was all quite French in terms of the communication! Genuinely, when I got to Paris that morning, I didn’t know whether I was playing on a written piece of music that I was going to be slotting into, or if it was one tune or many. In terms of expectation, it was quite loose. All I knew was that I was going to go into a studio with Tony Allen and I was excited. I guess I was a bit anxious about how it was gonna go. I didn’t want to get there and be like, ‘Oh, this isn’t clicking’ or ‘I’m a letdown’ or something.
The not-knowing what I’m walking into would freak me out.
It didn’t freak me out but I just didn’t know. I had a guitar and a loop pedal. I knew if I needed anything, I could find it on that loop pedal. It’s quite a Luddite way of working but I had about 80 loops in this little box that I’d go around with. I went in there and it wasn’t necessarily frosty, but it was kind of quiet. It was a cold morning, pretty early, it was December, it was a bit grim outside. And Tony was sat there in this basement studio and it was already pretty smoky in there.
What was incredible about it was the realisation that we were going to build something from scratch, them saying, ‘Oh no, there’s nothing written, you’re not playing on something that’s pre-written, we’re gonna go in and we’re gonna jam and you’re gonna play with Tony’. That moment was like, ‘Alright, OK’. Once we started playing and just how natural it felt, it’s been one of the peaks of my musical life, the fact that it flowed so well with Tony and there was this innate understanding and appreciation that felt like it was a two way street.
What your favourite memory of hanging out with Tony?
Probably Café OTO because it was the first time that I hung out with him fully socially in London. He came to play a small show at Café OTO in Dalston. It was amazing to watch him onstage, post having played with him, in this intimate venue. He was beckoning me over into his roped-off area, we were drinking whiskey together all night. To see him for the first time in a social context and to remember how much of a legend he is but then also to just be hanging out drinking Chivas Regal with a single cube of ice and a plastic cup well into the night, it was good fun.
Tell me about how some of the songs on the EP came to life. What about the opening track, Walk Through Fire?
Walk Through Fire was super quick. It’s basically the riff that I was checking my set-up in the studio with, it almost felt a bit like ‘Whoa, steady there’ because Tony was already playing along to it and and the producers were recording already. One aspect of the EP was things would happen very quickly in the studio, and then there’d be long lunches. I’d always be like, ‘Guys, can we just get back into the studio now?!’ I had to slow my rhythm down to conform with that way of working. It was Tony’s way of working as well, not to force stuff. He didn’t do many takes. There’s actually audio of me asking him to play something again and him refusing, saying, ‘No!’ and leaving the room.
My voice was feeling really strong at that point as well. I’d come straight off a tour and my voice felt elastic, like the range was kind of at its best. I remember that moment of singing some vocal takes and kind of seeing Tony not expecting that to come out of me. He seemed to be more into my voice than than the guitar stuff.
That must have given you confidence.
Yeah, even though he collaborated widely, I think that’s a point of newness, where it’s a kind of rock energy meeting with his style. We had some discussions about the lyrics, I wanted to make sure that he was included in it, and also to find a point of difference with Foals, so they are less introverted and more outward looking. He wanted the songs to be engaging with the streets or society more.
How did Rain Can’t Reach Us come about? I love that tune.
I do too. It’s one of my favourite pieces of music I’ve been part of. I was basically scrolling through my loops and when we were on that one, people got interested, Tony was like, ‘Let’s try that one’. There was probably five layers of guitars, so one went to the marimba, one went to a keyboard, one went to one guitar and another guitar and there was four of us playing that those parts in the room. And then Tony came in, and then I sang over it. There was definitely work done to it afterwards in terms of all the strings and the keys and stuff, but the first time we played it with Tony, that was it.
Is part of you sad it’s completed now?
Yeah, definitely. I’m really pleased to be releasing it, but there’s also a corner of it in which there’s sadness that we’re not doing it together, even the interviews and stuff. It would’ve been fun to have done them together. I’m looking forward to people hearing the EP in full and playing the shows to celebrate it. The idea of the Yaw means that there is a possibility in the future to collaborate with other people or do a record, some sort of continuation of it. It’s not necessarily a full stop or a dead end, but obviously the material with Tony, this is it, there’s no more.
Is this somewhere you could maybe find a home for the stuff you did with Karl Hyde that’s never seen the light of day? You also once told me you wanted to make a Greek folk record…
I need to figure it out. The Karl Hyde stuff would be awesome, I don’t know where he’s at with that. I’m feeling a pull to wanting to do more with Greek music. I’m not sure where that sits, it might be with this or it might be something different. I need to think it through a bit more. I like the idea that this record is postcards from different locations from different cultures, so maybe a future record could be like that. But this pull towards Greek music is definitely happening and I need to deal with that. That’s the big thing I’ve learned from this project with Tony, it is important to throw yourself into wherever you’re being pulled and finish it as well.
What about Foals, what’s the plans for that at the moment?
It’s at the stage where I think we’re enjoying having a bit of time off, all of us individually. We’re chatting quite a lot. It’s [Foals guitarist] Jimmy’s 40th today, we’re jumping on a call later to virtually wish him happy birthday because he’s on the other side of the world right now. We’re probably going to go to Iceland to hang out towards the end of the year to and we’ll know more about what we’re doing after that. We’re going to go to a remote house in Iceland and see what happens.
ND