Foals return with music that 'makes you want to smash a room up'

Foals are (left to right) Jack Bevan, Walter Gervers, Edwin Congreaves, Jimmy Smith and Yannis Philipakkis

Foals might have decamped to the south of France to record their fourth album, What Went Down, but frontman Yannis Philippakis says they won't be turning their backs on the "small, dark and stinky" room he's been writing songs in since he was a teenager.

When it comes to creating their art, Foals singer and guitarist Yannis Philippakis says the band are all about keeping it "spartan". But, we all need a break sometimes.

"In the past we've gone out of our way to make the recording experience as difficult as possible," Philipakkis tells the BBC, "and we just didn't have it in us to do that this time.

"We wanted the process to be a bit more hedonistic and maybe - dare I say it - luxurious in some way.

"To go somewhere where you could open a door and have sunlight come in - an encouraging place where you could swim, drink wine and stay up all night and it be balmy. I think it was just good for morale."

Foals have been nominated for the Mercury Prize twice, including for 2013's Holy Fire

He's keen to point out the sound quality in La Fabrique studios in Saint-Remy-de Provence (the village where Van Gogh once spent time in a psychiatric ward after cutting off his ear) is "amazing", adding "all the nerdy stuff is right". It's location in the south of France was "a bonus".

Philippakis says he and bandmates Jack Bevan, Jimmy Smith, Walter Gervers and Edwin Congreave "needed a change" from the "pretty intense" experience of writing the songs in their Oxford studio. It's small - "all five of us can't fit in the room at the same time" - it "stinks" and has "no daylight".

"It grinds you down" he adds, in a tone that implies he's felt that full effect once or twice. Nevertheless, Philippakis insists the not-so-charming space is the place to be when it comes to their songwriting.

"You strip away any veneer of success and you just get reverted into the person that you were when you were 15," he says. "That is actually where I learned how to write songs with Jack the drummer.

"I don't want to go in some posh writing room where it's all parquet wood floors or whatever. I'm suspicious of material wealth in terms of how it affects creativity.

"Even if I'm wrong - which I might be - I still feel like it's a good way of looking at things, because it definitely stops the seductive temptations there can be with becoming a more successful band.

"We enjoy the shows, and we enjoy partying after the shows and all of that, but when it comes to the writing, I think making it a bit spartan is only a good thing."

Philippakis' penchant for crowd surfing often stresses out the security at Foals live shows

On the subject of partying, Philippakis is feeling a little delicate the day we meet. He's just back from a festival in Romania, where the band celebrated hard with fellow musicians The Maccabees in honour of their friends' first UK number one album. So hard in fact that Philippakis overslept and missed his flight home.

Now he's craving chocolate - which arrives in the East London hotel room in the form of coconut macaroons - and cigarettes (the room is equipped with a balcony for strategic smoking breaks), as well as life on the road.

"We're chomping at the bit to get back out there," says Philippakis. "I'm missing being on tour".

Fast forward to the band's intimate London show to launch the album earlier this week and it's evident the singer's "happy place" is up there on stage. And of course diving off it, which he does several times to the delight of the band's beaming, sweaty fans waiting with outstretched arms - some then attempting crowd-surfing manoeuvres of their own.

The new tracks receive an equally rapturous welcome, the sun-drenched guitar riffs of Mountain at My Gates slotting right in alongside Foals classics like Spanish Sahara and Inhaler.

The album's "heavier" title track, What Went Down, is met with high energy, as the crowd relish booming out the frantic lyrics: "When I see a man I see a lion... When I see a man I see a liar." It's a track Philippakis already loves playing live.

"It makes you want to lose control. I'm glad that we've managed to do that with a song - it's not what anyone would have expected from us when we started out. "

Foals played on a tiny stage at London's Field Day Festival back in 2007

If the band are feeling any pressure about following up their last two Mercury Prize-nominated albums, 2010's Total Life Forever and 2013's Holy Fire, they aren't letting on. Opening the album with the "ferocious" What Went Down is a message they mean business, and it was the first new track they shared back in June.

"It's kind of an attention seeking song in some ways," admits Philippakis. "It's the kind of song that makes you want to smash a room up, or walk down the street and barge people out the way."

He remembers feeling "like some sort of weird Clockwork Orange droog" skulking around a "dystopian, twisted city" when he wrote it. That, and being "kind of obsessed" with the movie There Will Be Blood.

"I think it's heavier than even we expected. When we were writing it we were like, 'are we really going to go there?'. And then there was this feeling that it would be a shame not to."

Of course the album has its "tender tracks" and "atmospheric moments" too, including Birch Tree, and closing song A Knife in the Ocean.

Sticking with tradition - each new Foals album has come with a new producer - the band worked with James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco, who has produced Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine in the past.

Foals have played a few European festivals this summer, including Szeiget in Budapest, Hungary

"Every time we make a record I want it to feel new and I want there to be a different challenge and a different chemistry in the room.

"He's one of the best producers out there," says Philippakis. "Sometimes we've had trouble with producers and this wasn't one of those cases. He was very stabilising and he curtailed some of the more self destructive tendencies that the band can have."

The critics seem to have warmed to the result. Mojo's given What Went Down four stars, though it gets three from The Independent, and 7/10 from Clash and NME, who called it "often brilliant".

There are suggestions it could be the record to propel them to the top of festival bills and into stadiums. Did they ever imagine getting to album number four?

"I definitely remember feeling like things were precarious at the beginning," admits Philippakis on their early days. "You just need to look around at all the bands we came through with - very few of them are around anymore.

"That's probably something that's fed into the confidence of the band. [That] we've got to this stage feels like an accomplishment in some way.

"But I feel like it's a vocation," he adds. "I don't know what else I would do with my life. "

Foals' fourth album What Went Down is released on Friday 28 August.