FYI: Specifically relating to a moving ship or aircraft, yaw means to swerve around a vertical axis.
As Yannis & The Yaw, Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis plans to release a string of collaborations, the first of which is an EP featuring some of Tony Allen’s final recorded beats.
Lagos Paris London was about 60% done before Allen died, but Philippakis knew the legendary Afrobeat drummer wanted these songs to be heard. So he recruited Allen’s engineers, Vincent Taeger and Vincent Taurelle – who also contribute percussion/marimba and keys respectively – explaining they “simply knew how Tony would want things to sound”.
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The initial sessions went down in Paris during the 2016 refuse strike, with Walk Through Fire drawing inspo from the streets surrounding the “smoke-filled, ‘70s throwback studio”, which were minging – all that uncollected garbage!
During Rain Can’t Reach Us, opening bleeps and an oscillating hook step aside once Allen’s dexterous drum crescendo kicks in. Lyrically, Philippakis has described the closing Clementine as “a thematic cousin to Foals’ Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost”.
Under The Strikes is a clap-happy jam, set adrift by bold, joyful brass flourishes. Philippakis sings this standout track – which whittles right back to delicate drums and gently plucked, meandering guitar – in falsetto.
These lyrics were written following Allen’s death, with Philippakis lamenting, “I once thought we had time to spare…” – his plans to tour this material alongside Allen, one of the world’s greatest and most innovative timekeepers, now cruelly thwarted.
If you randomly chucked on one of these tracks at a party, every reveller within earshot would be like, “Who dat behind the drum kit?”
LABEL: TRANSGRESSIVE
RELEASE: OUT NOW
