Foals

With two top 10 albums already under their belt, Oxford five-piece Foals prepare to return with their third and most exhilarating album yet. The new album is titled ‘Holy Fire’ and is due for UK release Feb 11th 2013.

Foals premiered their brand new, electrifying comeback track ‘Inhaler” on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show last week. It was played three times in 45 minutes on the show, and the accompanying video has had half a million hits on Youtube in 4 days. They will perform the track, and another brand new song, on Later with Jools Holland this evening & this Friday.

Inhaler is an epic, blistering, shamanistic purging of the soul – four urgent minutes set out to raise the dead, hit the UK last week. Heavier than anything Foals have written before it nevertheless shines with their inimitable groove and funk. Lyrics reference claustrophobia & narcissism.

Holy Fire has been recorded by prestigious production duo Flood & Moulder at Assault and Battery studios in London. Their previous work includes Smashing Pumpkins, PJ Harvey, Nine Inch Nails, and The Killers.

Foals were nominated for a Mercury nomination with ‘Total Life Forever’. At the 2011 NME awards in they won ‘Best Single’ for Spanish Sahara and were nominated for four other awards. They were also nominated for ‘Best Song’ for Spanish Sahara at the 2011 Ivor Novello awards.

Facebook – FOALS

Website – FOALS

New album ‘What Went Down’ is out August 28^th

“Has the potential to be the one [album] that makes Foals truly massive” – NME

 “An enormous, seriously impressionistic contemporary rock album imbued with spectacular splashes of gothic darkness” – Q

““Theyrefine their distinctive sound and conjure melancholy with accomplished,vast electronic textures. What Went Down is their most fully realised yet” – 8/10, Uncut

“Foals are very firmly on the good foot” 4* Mojo

“There’s no ignoring the fact that Foals are back” – Evening Standard

“Who’s going to dominate next year’s festivals? Foals – and this heavy-duty new album is why” – GQ

“Pushes the envelope – Foals are at their peak” – 5*, Shortlist

Anticipation continues to build for Foals’ eagerly anticipated new album ‘What Went Down’ which looks set to shape a bold new era in the quintet’s career when it’s released on August 28^th. Their thrillingly visceral return with the single also titled ‘What Went Down’ earned a flurry of Radio 1 support (Hottest Record in the World, Tune of the Week and Track of the Day) as it accelerated towards 1.7 million views mark at YouTube.

That sense of Foals ascending to new creative peaks was intensified with the reaction that greeted the follow-up single ‘Mountain At My Gates’ and its ground-breaking GoPro interactive video which was directed by Nabil, as well as with ‘A Knife In The Ocean’ which received a World Record premiere on Beats 1 courtesy of Zane Lowe.

After the confirmation of a special album launch show at London’s Village Underground on August 25^th, Foals can now announce that they’ll embark upon their first UK club tour since February 2014.

The dates – scheduled below – include the opening night of Rockfeedback and Moshi Moshi’sunique new ‘By The Sea’ event which will be held at Dreamland Margate. The intimate show, held at the recently relaunched and reimagined venue which was one of the nation’s original pleasure parks, will see Foals (plus special guest supports and DJs) play across different eye-catching and imaginative spaces within the Dreamland complex.

November

5^th – Nottingham, Rock City

6^th – Liverpool, Olympia

7^th – Norwich, UEA

8^th – Cardiff, University, Great Hall

10^th – Aberdeen, Music Hall

11^th – Newcastle, O2 Academy

13^th – Southampton, Guildhall

14^th – Margate, Dreamland – By The Sea event

15^th – Bristol, Anson Rooms

16^th – Cambridge, Corn Exchange

Tickets go on sale at 9am on Friday August 21^st and will be priced at £25 for all dates except for the Margate By The Sea event which will be £28.50. They’ll be available from www.alt-tickets.co.uk,www.gigsandtours.com,www.gigsinscotland.comand www.seetickets.com.

Foals – Yannis Philippakis (vocals/guitar), Jimmy Smith (guitar/keys), Walter Gervers (bass), Jack Bevan (drums) and Edwin Congreave (keys) – recorded ‘What Went Down’ at the desolate Studios La Fabrique which is located in the same village in the south of France in which Van Gogh was hospitalised after savaging his own ear.

‘What Went Down’ is an album that grapples with questions that are a world away from the bland bleatings of homogenised pop: permanence and impermanence; life and death; solitude; vulnerability; intimacy; passion; rage; humanity – weighty issues that make demands of the people creating that music, and of all those who listen to it, too.

Sonically, it’s an album that precariously seesaws between primal aggression and naked vulnerability. It’s an approach that delivers a contrast of muscular shocks with the fiery central riff of ‘Snake Oil’ and the menacing percussive march of ‘Albatross’ set against some of the band’s most openly experimentally moments to date such as cocktail of afrobeat and drum machines that underpins ‘Night Swimmers’ and the stripped-back, vocal-led ‘Give It All’.

The album closes on an astonishingly beautiful note with ‘A Knife in the Ocean’, akin to both the calm before the storm, but also the stillness and silence after it has passed.

The album is now available to pre-order on digital, CD, CD/DVD and vinyl formats, as well as limited edition box set which is available exclusively from Foals’ online store.

‘What Went Down’ will represent Foals’ fourth album after ‘Antidotes’ (2007, #3), ‘Total Life Forever’ (2010, #8) and ‘Holy Fire’ (2013, #2). After an almost unprecedented double-bill of shows in a day at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall, the summer of 2013 saw Foals present a teaser of their future as they headlined their first major festivals at Bestival, Latitude and Parklife with the biggest and most reactive crowds of the weekend. Next summer’s festival circuit, it seems, will see Foals ascend to new heights.

By the close of the year, the band’s critical reception had also continued to soar with a plethora of major honours including Best Live Act at the Q Awards, Best Single for ‘Inhaler’ at the NME Awards and Best Live Act at The Sun Bizarre Awards. As with ‘Total Life Forever’, ‘Holy Fire’ again earned the band a Mercury Prize nomination.