How would you describe your experience of higher education?
Brief but sweet. I dropped out after first year so I did the Fresher’s thing and that was it. I do remember that I didn’t enjoy Fresher’s Week. I found the pressure of trying to integrate myself into a big group of people quite difficult. I did make friends but I found forcing it a little bit weird. I instantly just involved with the people who smoked cigarettes, because it was a common interest. I liked Uni though.
What advice would you give to Freshers?
Arrive at uni with pot because you’ll make friends and instantly get to know everybody.
What are your impressions of Nottingham?
I really like it. I’ve got some friends that live in Sneinton, so I’ve been out in Nottingham a fair bit, plus my brother was at Uni here. It’s one of our favourite UK cities to play in and go out in. I grew up listening to a lot of bands from Nottingham, particularly a record label called Gringo, and I used to be really into that whole scene. I love Rock City and I love Stealth, very sweaty. It’s quite fun.
The label ‘indie’ is often overused. Do you reject this label or do you reject labels in general?
We just play the music we play. I can see why people call it indie, but I can see why people would call it anything. I mean, we’re definitely not psy-trance,
Your singles get heavy rotation on dancefloors. When you wrote these songs was adding that dance element intentional?
In the beginning it was intentional. We came from quite an experimental scene, so when we started Foals we wanted to do something that was totally different and more pop-orientated; something that people could dance to. We saw it as a challenge to make that sort of music, so different to what we were used to. In the beginning it was very calculated, and I still think there’ll definitely be something very rhythmic on the next record.; it’ll be dancey but we don’t want to be this one dimensional electro-dance whatever band. I want to try and turn people on to other stuff as well; stuff that might not seem as ‘cool’.
It’s been said that you cross and bend a number of genres. Would you say you take elements of other genres and translate them onto guitar/rock band format?
You do it by not thinking about it. When I read stuff like that, I don’t quite understand what they mean. There’s no way you can consciously do stuff like that, you’ve just got to be like a musical and cultural sponge. I listen to records constantly, and we all watch films and read books, and the more you immerse yourself in an artistic world that’s separate from the one that you live in, you become this sponge, and when you get wrung out by your record label you just hope that you come out with loads of stuff that’s good. You shouldn’t think too much about these things. It’s the same with playing live; the more you try and think about putting on a good live show, you can ruin it. A lot of these bands that put too much thought into putting on a really good live show just end up seeming quite choreographed and just stand there thinking ‘Oh come on, I just want to see you play!’ I mean, nobody plays like some bands play. You look at these big arena rock bands and they aren’t playing like the people they were when they started their band, they’re playing more like this commodity or product that’s got to have this ‘thing about them’, and the more they do it, the more I think it harms their product.
How would you describe your relationship with Transgressive Records? How does it feel to be a shining jewel on their already glittering crown?
Pretty good. They let us do whatever we want and they put out our records. They’re nice people and they give us money. They’re the reason I don’t still wash dishes or still be at Uni, so I feel pretty good towards them. We tell them what we want to do and they just say ‘yeah’. That was the idea when we signed, we didn’t want to sign to a label that would try to make us into something that we weren’t. All of our videos and artwork are done by our friends from back home so we’ve never entered into working with big music industry people.
What advice would you give to Freshers?
Arrive at uni with pot because you’ll make friends and instantly get to know everybody.
What are your impressions of Nottingham?
I really like it. I’ve got some friends that live in Sneinton, so I’ve been out in Nottingham a fair bit, plus my brother was at Uni here. It’s one of our favourite UK cities to play in and go out in. I grew up listening to a lot of bands from Nottingham, particularly a record label called Gringo, and I used to be really into that whole scene. I love Rock City and I love Stealth, very sweaty. It’s quite fun.
The label ‘indie’ is often overused. Do you reject this label or do you reject labels in general?
We just play the music we play. I can see why people call it indie, but I can see why people would call it anything. I mean, we’re definitely not psy-trance,
Your singles get heavy rotation on dancefloors. When you wrote these songs was adding that dance element intentional?
In the beginning it was intentional. We came from quite an experimental scene, so when we started Foals we wanted to do something that was totally different and more pop-orientated; something that people could dance to. We saw it as a challenge to make that sort of music, so different to what we were used to. In the beginning it was very calculated, and I still think there’ll definitely be something very rhythmic on the next record.; it’ll be dancey but we don’t want to be this one dimensional electro-dance whatever band. I want to try and turn people on to other stuff as well; stuff that might not seem as ‘cool’.
It’s been said that you cross and bend a number of genres. Would you say you take elements of other genres and translate them onto guitar/rock band format?
You do it by not thinking about it. When I read stuff like that, I don’t quite understand what they mean. There’s no way you can consciously do stuff like that, you’ve just got to be like a musical and cultural sponge. I listen to records constantly, and we all watch films and read books, and the more you immerse yourself in an artistic world that’s separate from the one that you live in, you become this sponge, and when you get wrung out by your record label you just hope that you come out with loads of stuff that’s good. You shouldn’t think too much about these things. It’s the same with playing live; the more you try and think about putting on a good live show, you can ruin it. A lot of these bands that put too much thought into putting on a really good live show just end up seeming quite choreographed and just stand there thinking ‘Oh come on, I just want to see you play!’ I mean, nobody plays like some bands play. You look at these big arena rock bands and they aren’t playing like the people they were when they started their band, they’re playing more like this commodity or product that’s got to have this ‘thing about them’, and the more they do it, the more I think it harms their product.
How would you describe your relationship with Transgressive Records? How does it feel to be a shining jewel on their already glittering crown?
Pretty good. They let us do whatever we want and they put out our records. They’re nice people and they give us money. They’re the reason I don’t still wash dishes or still be at Uni, so I feel pretty good towards them. We tell them what we want to do and they just say ‘yeah’. That was the idea when we signed, we didn’t want to sign to a label that would try to make us into something that we weren’t. All of our videos and artwork are done by our friends from back home so we’ve never entered into working with big music industry people.
You’re a band renowned for the mathematics and technicality behind your music. Would you say this is intrinsic to band’s identity? Will this feature strongly on the next album? What can fans expect from future releases?
I hope not. No matter how much you want to change there will always be certain elements of your band that sound the same, because of the chemistry between the five of us will always have some kind of set point, but in terms of being quite mathematical, that’s not really a conscious decision it’s more of a product of listening to quite technical records. The more we tagged as that, the more it makes me want to create a record that’s the exact opposite, just to undercut people’s expectations. When we started out in Oxford we were known as this experimental and difficult band and that was the background that we came from, so we just thought we should make some pop music that everyone can like, rather than just some bearded men in a cellar in Oxford, with a collection of four million CDs saying things like ‘Oh yeah, this is like latter-kraut-rock’ or whatever. We want to make a surf rock record, we want to go to Hawaii and make this really blissed-out, Um-Bongo type record. Not psychedelic, but proper 1950s style. Kind of like Telstar maybe, I like Joe Meek a lot.
You’ve previously said that you don’t enjoy big rock shows as you feel very exposed, yet this tour is one of quite large venues and you’ve played to some massive crowds on this summers’ festival circuit. Would you say that you’re attitude towards touring has changed at all? Do you arenas in your future?
Yeah, I’ve become a lot more used to it now. I still always feel more comfortable in smaller venues but I’m not frightened anymore of big shows. I got really nervous before Reading festival but then it went really well. It just depends on different things, like different situations. At festivals and bigger shows you need to make this bigger and more encompassing sound and try to play out to everyone, which is weird for us because we never play facing the crowd so it’s a challenge for us not to seem like this small band on a big stage. I don’t really see us playing arenas, unless we dramatically change what we do and I’m not thinking about that. I just want to make a really good record and I don’t think like we’ve totally done that yet. We haven’t made the record that silences the critics in our heads. We’re pretty scathing to ourselves and I want to get to the point where we don’t have to be like that, not to ourselves or to each other. So everything else just seems quite irrelevant to me, things like doing TV programmes. The single goal of this band is to make music and to sit back and make something that we can feel happy with.
Do you think as a band you’ll ever be satisfied or do you think that if you become satisfied you’ll become complacent?
I think if we became satisfied we’d stop making music together and we’d do something else. Take R.E.M, and those bands with twenty year careers. They’ve made their best work and they know it but they carry on because it’s an addiction. If I were them I’d have quit in the early nineties because they’ve put out some amazing records but since then I’d have been thinking ‘Oh I need to make a record which is as good as the one I made way back then’. So I think we’ll make another few records at least but I doubt we’ll ever get that silence in our heads where we can relax.
www.myspace.com/foalsAndy Trendell
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