After a one off session between legendary drummer Tony Allen and Foals frontman, Yannis Philippakis, a posthumous album was made.
It was 2016. Foals frontman, Yannis Philippakis had just returned to London from a gruelling tour. Depleted, emotionally and physically spent, he needed time off. A moment to just be, before stepping into whatever Foals were planning next.
Then an offer came through for a two-day session with the man Brian Eno called “the greatest drummer who ever lived”, Tony Allen. Dialling in from his home in Camberwell in London, Philippakis revealed that he very nearly said no.
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“At that time, Tony was looking to collaborate with different musicians, and I just happened to be invited through a mutual friend. I agreed to it much earlier, but when the date came around, I almost backed out. But then I had a friend who encouraged me to go because I was a really big fan, especially of his work with people like Fela Kuti, Sébastien Tellier and Jeff Mills.”
Five coffees down, Philippakis arrived in Paris to meet Allen. The studio was a building located on the outskirts of Paris. As Philippakis puts it, “It was a single-storey building that reeked of cigarettes and espressos and had an underground studio. It was full of amazing equipment and lots of West African instruments.”
Not really knowing what he was supposed to be doing there, Philippakis admits in retrospect that he was a bit nervous for the session. To add fuel to the fire, Philippakis also had no clue what he was going to be doing there. Upon finally meeting Allen, it wasn’t the greatest start.
“Was a little bit awkward at first. Tony was not a morning person at all. But he warmed up as the day went on. In the morning it would just take an espresso and a spliff to get him there. He also had these welcoming French men there with him who owned the studio. They were the conduits for those first few hours. They spoke Tony’s language.”
Over the course of the two-day stint, the relationship between Philippakis and Allen eventually softened up.
“We cut Walk Through Fire, Rain Can’t Reach Us and Night Green in those first two days from scratch. Then the guys in the Yaw [Vincent Tyrell and Vincent Tiger] worked on them a lot after I left. So, we had rough versions of those songs.” Often working late into the early hours, Philippakis eventually began to find rhythm in Allen’s working style. While Philippakis thought he would be creatively fatigued after the tour, he says that Allen brought something out of him. Something he did not know he had lurking inside.
Later, after Philippakis left Paris, he continued to keep in touch with Allen. “I would go to his London shows when he was in town. We would sit together and drink whisky. He loved a scotch. We would hang out. I would listen to him. We had a way of being with each other.”
The one piece of advice he gleaned from Allen was to be, as Philippakis puts it, ‘restlessly creative’. “That was the lesson. If you look at how innovative Tony was until his last day, he was constantly making records with me. He was like completely dedicated to what he was doing. That’s how I’d like to be at that age.”
Over the course of the next few years, Philippakis seldom had the time to work on their music. As a result, it largely remained unfinished. Tony Allen passed away in April of 2020. While this was a shock to the system for Philippakis, he continued to remain excited about the music they had made together.
“There was something about them being unfinished that was exciting. I liked how a full stop had been put on the collaboration. I would pull them out late night at parties and show them off to friends.”
Then, as a posthumous tribute to Allen, Philippakis began finishing off the record. Speaking on this, Philippakis offered, “The music is a different atmosphere than something else that Tony had done. There is a sadness in there. But the fulfilment and the joy of the songs meant they had to be finished. To salvage something.”
While Philippakis did not have Allen to assist in finishing off the records, he did have Allen’s team around him. “Obviously they had mixed Tony’s records before. So, when it came to do the mixing on this, they could accurately describe how Tony would have wanted his drums. We wanted to make sure the drums sounded exactly as he would have wanted them to.”
The title of the EP, Lagos Paris London was also a tribute to Allen. “The way we thought about the Yaw was it was almost like a set of musical postcards from the cultures we’re from. Tony was from Lagos. He lived in Paris. The other collaborators lived in Paris. I’m from London.”
One can only imagine where they will go next.
Yannis and the Yaw’s new EP Lagos Paris London is out now. It is available to stream and download here.
