Antidotes – Foals

FOALS are a five-piece dance-rock band currently based in their hometown of Oxford. Fed up with interchangeable electro blasting every party and club, they decided in 2005 to make their own music that they would love to dance to. "We wanted to make music that was also a bit technically sophisticated. More than just party music, but still danceable," Yannis explains.

The first thing they did was to call themselves FOALS (foals), as a reference to Yannis' last name Philippakis, which means little friend of horses in Greek. "I like the name FOALS because it's a nice word and it doesn't reveal so much about the band. It sounds kind of fresh and new," Yannis said. Next, they got a small practice room and threw ideas around. The excitement was building. "I was completely shocked at how critical everyone was of each other," Edwin recalls. And Yannis explains, "We're always very self-critical. There was even an almost dangerous amount of criticism." Eventually, however, there was a form that everyone could agree on: Mix drums loudly, keep the guitars chord-free, lay down riffs above the 12th fret of the guitar, and sprinkle in the occasional splash of synthesizer color. The result is britzelnder, perfectly formulated dance rock, as you can hear it clearly on the first single Balloons, on Hummer and on Two Steps Twice.