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Foals are a five-piece dance-rock band currently living in Brighton. Yannis Philippakis (20, vocals/guitar), Edwin Congreave (22, keyboards), Walter Gervers (23, bass), Jimmy Smith (22, guitar) and Jack Bevan (21, drums) met in their native Oxford, where they bonded over a shared sense of humour.

Spanking New 08 | Foals Live

Bored with the interchangeable electro records they heard at every party, they decided to make the kind of music they wanted to dance to. “We wanted to make music that was very technical, that wasn’t just party music, but at the same time you could dance to it,” explains Yannis. Live, Foals don’t so much fizz with energy as explode like a well-shaken bottle of champagne. “It’s like we’re all battling for supremacy on stage,” says Edwin.

The dance-inflected beats have seen them rock venues ranging from the kitchen at a house party to London warehouse parties. It’s no exaggeration to say they are the best new live band in the UK. Meanwhile, the lyrics are striking, surreal images seemingly disconnected from the music, boyhood reveries drifting over crystalline soundscapes. “They’re not narratives,” says Yannis. “They’re usually a image that’s seared on my brain. For example, Balloons is a love song, but I had this image of hot balloons being elevated on some strange fuel. I had this image of thousands of hot balloons in the sky. Other lyrics are about partying and girls, but at the same time they’re about sine waves and cosine waves. I want the lyrics to heighten the music, not to smother it.”

The band are signed with Transgressive Records in Europe and Sub Pop Records in the USA. A full length album, entitled "Antidotes" is due for release around March 2008; it has been produced by Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio.

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