Foals’ Yannis Philippakis shares new project Yannis & The Yaw

Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis has announced details of a brand new project, which began taking shape when he first collaborated with the late legendary Fela Kuti drummer Tony Allen back in 2017.

Arriving under the guise of Yannis & The Yaw, Yannis will release his new EP ‘Lagos Paris London’ on 30th August via Transgressive Records. The EP - which he assures is not the start of “a solo career” per say - began during a two-day session in Paris, where Yannis also worked with Tony’s longtime collaborators Vincent Taeger (percussion, marimba), Vincent Taurelle (keys) and Ludovic Bruni (bass, guitar), and was subsequently completed after Tony’s death in 2020.

“There was an imperative to finish it in a way that I had never felt with another record,” Yannis has said, of the EP. “There was a deep duty to do it, to finish it as well as possible, and to pay respect to him by getting it out there. Going through some of the drum takes was a moving experience because those recordings were some of the last pieces of music he ever worked on. There’s an eternal quality to these drum tracks, and you feel a continuity of his life and energy through them. He wanted people to hear this, and it’s good to be able to do it for him - but of course it’s slightly bittersweet.”

‘Lagos Paris London’ is five tracks in length, and comes previewed by the EP’s lead track ‘Walk Through Fire’. Check out the tracklisting, and listen to the first track, below.