Foals‘ Yannis Philippakis has shared the first taster of his long-awaited project with late Fela Kuti legend Tony Allen – as well as launching new collaborative project Yannis & The Yaw. Check out the single ‘Walk Through Fire’ below, and watch our interview with the frontman above.
Philippakis has been teasing the project for some years, first revealing news of sessions with the drummer to NME back in 2017. The pioneering Afrobeat musician, who played with both Fela Kuti and The Good, The Bad & The Queen, died in 2020 at the age of 79 and the music had been in development for some time ahead of his passing.
Now, Philippakis has announced that their work together will be released this August on the ‘Lagos Paris London’ EP. Completed with Allen’s regular collaborators Vincent Taeger (percussion, marimba), Vincent Taurelle (keys) and Ludovic Bruni (bass, guitar), the collection is also launched today with the funk-driven single ‘Walk Through Fire’, and marks the start of a new collaborative arm for the Foals singer: The Yaw.
With a yaw defined as “the twisting or oscillation of a moving ship or aircraft about a vertical axis”, this shall be the first of future projects with an ever-revolving set of collaborators.
To mark the launch of the project, NME met Philippakis in Damon Albarn’s 13 Studios in West London – a place he described as “Tony Allen’s spiritual home in London” having done much of the recording for The Good, The Bad & The Queen there, with the drummer even living upstairs for a period.
“I feel unburdened now,” said Philippakis about finally having the music with Allen out done. “There has been this unfinished business that has been occupying my vision for the future. I had to finish it. Especially after Tony passed away and in the midst of COVID; it became much more of a serious project. We had to try and do it justice. It feels good, and I just people to hear it and for it to be out.”
Philippakis’ love affair with Allen’s music first started when Foals would party to Fela Kuti’s music when they shared a house together in their early days in the ’00s.
“We’d listen to a bunch of old Afrobeat records,” he recalled. “The record we’d listen to the most was a compiled Tony Allen ‘best of’ that had ‘Progress’, ‘Afro Disco Beat’, all of his classic tracks from throughout the years. That record got absolutely hammered – it got worn out.
“Fast forward a few years later and somebody we knew in common was trying to get Tony to collab with more and different people; some more unexpected collaborations. They called me and said, ‘Do you want to go over to Paris to write some tracks with Tony?’ I jumped at the opportunity, but down the line we were on tour. Time passed, the tour took its toll, I came back knackered and I almost didn’t go.”
He added: “I was just broken by the end of the tour, and the idea of schlepping my guitar and going to Paris for a session seemed insane, but I was encouraged to go and it changed my life. It was one of the best musical experiences of my life.”
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