Music
Yannis and the Yaw is a unique creative project from Foals’ Yannis Philippakis – however upcoming EP ‘Lagos Paris London’ is not to be mistaken for a solo endeavour, as Yannis collaborated with the late, great Tony Allen, an afrobeat innovator and key Fela Kuti musical ally. “I didn’t want to put it out as a solo record. I think that it’s so much part of a collaborative project, especially with Tony Allen, but also with the other collaborators on the record: Vincent Taeger, Vincent Taurelle, who are in the live band. There was a question about how to represent the music and I think that it’s not going to be a fixed band because, obviously, Tony’s no longer with us.”
Yannis had been a fan of Tony Allen’s for years and Foals had listened to “a lot of Afrobeat” especially when making their debut record, ‘Antidotes’, so when a mutual friend suggested Yannis travel to Paris to work with Tony, he says: “I just jumped at the chance. I went to Paris at the end of a Foals tour. I just took my guitar and a loop pedal… I went in and I just started jamming with them. “I think we just connected on that kind of level, just on a musical level at first – there was a kind of sense of play in the room. We were excited by the combination of the two of us being in a room together and where it would go. We didn’t know what it would sound like or where it would go and that was intoxicating in some ways.”
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The process of creating music on this project took Yannis out of his comfort zone. “With ‘Lagos Paris London’, I just took myself into a room and I met [Tony Allen] half-way across the floor, we met somewhere in the middle and the record is the process of that, so it doesn’t feel entirely mine as a Foals record might do. It’s the balancing of two energies, two quite different energies as well. He was in his seventies when we were writing and I was in my late twenties, early thirties. He grew up in Lagos and I grew up here. We had all these points of difference and I think what makes the record exciting is, through all the differences, we managed to make something in the middle.”
When listening to the ‘Yannis and the Yaw’ EP, there are elements of it that sound distinctly Foals-like. Yannis explains why it is hard for him to separate himself from the band. “Foals is something that is so close to who I am, musically. It’s the music I’ve been making now since I was 17, so for 20 years Foals is just my musical expression. It really feels like it’s that sort of my project in the sense that my personality is in the lyrics and in the singing. I bare my soul in that band, it’s like my main vessel of expression. It’s a tricky one to explain.” He adds: “If I write a Foals song, I’m quite comfortable for it to almost be a page out of my diary. It can be that personal and it’s that much of an inward journey that a Foals track has that space that with [‘Lagos Paris London’] partly out of respect to Tony, but also partly because otherwise what’s the point of difference? There has to be a point of difference.” Yannis wanted to avoid being “overtly emotional” with the lyrics, while Tony wanted the lyrics to be more socially engaged. Yannis recalls: “I think that Tony also wanted the lyrics to engage with the world.”
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Yannis had a feeling that the music they were making in Paris was something special. “I think it’s important to not be over-confident, but it was quite a relaxed session. We weren’t going to make an album. That wasn’t the plan, so there was a sense of exploration and ‘Let’s see where this goes’ and I think that more light-hearted approach to making the music meant that it was enjoyable…The fact that we were having a good time… I looked over and I could see that Tony was excited and that made me feel excited. It made me feel good about what we were doing.”
Yannis and the Yaw have three live shows planned this year. “What I can tell you is that we’ve got an amazing group of musicians together with the band itself… I think, it’s going to be really wicked and I’m genuinely thrilled to see how it will sound in the room and I’m obviously saddened that Tony can’t play it live, but I think we’ll do it justice and, considering he’s not here, this is going to be the best consolation in terms of musicians.”
Current single ‘Rain Can’t Reach Us’ is a powerful track, which showcase Yannis’ impressive baritone vocals. “I was super excited about ‘Rain Can’t Reach Us’ right from the beginning, really. I think to this point, it’s my favourite track.” He agrees that his vocals were particularly strong, but also says this made him nervous to re-record them. “I had come right off tour and my voice was feeling really strong. I remember thinking, ‘I can kind of sing anything’ and I was also in the room playing it with Tony and maybe there was almost an element of being emboldened by that.”
He shares: “I re-sung the vocal with lyrics [later]. All of the moves of the melody and the vocal line were done on the first day. I was singing gobbledegook, mainly, I didn’t have lyrics. I had all of the melody and the vocal take done and one fo the reasons why it took so long for us to finish the EP and to finish ‘Rain Can’t Reach Us’ in particular was that the guide vocal, the vocal that I did on that day, there was something so powerful in it, even though there wasn’t lyrics, I was nervous about having to go back to it and re-do it but we managed it so I feel really pleased.”
Yannis is busy for the next few weeks, with the release of ‘Lagos Paris London’ and also preparing for the live shows in Amsterdam, Paris and London in September. Naturally, there will also be “another Foals record, at some point” but his focus is completely engaged with this new project. “Getting ready for the Yannis and the Yaw shows, which is going to be a fair amount of work, because obviously we haven’t played together before and all of that, even though there’s not that many shows, we just want to make sure that it’s really great.”
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‘Lagos Paris London’ is out on August 30th – pre-save it now.
Words: Narzra Ahmed
Photo Credit: Kit Montieth
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