Stable Environment

Which for the frontman of one of the hiottest bands in Britain, is no mean feat.

Yannis is vocalist and founding member of Foals – the biggest outfit to have come out of Oxford since Radiohead and Supergrass.

The math-rock cult act turned punk-funk buzz band have had it all – their debut album Antidotes hit number three in the album charts, they played storming sets at Reading and Glastonbury, and even graced the cover of NME.

So you could be forgiven for imagining Yannis, drummer Jack Bevan, guitarist Jimmy Smith, keys man Edwin Congreave and bassist Walter Gervers might have chosen to hang loose in California, mix with the smart set in London or New York, or decamp to country piles.

Instead they have spent the past year in a student-style shared house in Jericho dreaming up their next album.

“i just like it here,” says Yannis. “I’m comfortable, it feels like home. Oxford’s a beautiful city with interesting people. And, anyway, I’m not into social climbing.

“It’s good to have friends here who pre-date the band,” he adds. “We have a group of friends who have lasted for a long time – people we went to school with and others who were in different Oxford bands and it keeps us grounded.”

After all the excitement and glare surrounding the release of Antidotes and their appearances – the band had quietly slipped off the radar.

“We stopped touring,” explains Yannis, previously of Summertown. “We toured for a very long time and wanted to stop.”

There was also the small matter of their second album, Total Life Forever, which is out this month.

“We don’t write well on tour,” Yannis confesses, “And we wanted to take the time to do that. So we moved into the house with members of Jonquil. It was good not having to move or play.”

The album grew and flowered in its own space, without being forced. “It happened organically,” he explains. “We wanted to write it on our own terms, and the best way to do that was in that house.

“The people who wanted to write would write. Someone would start and the others would jam.”

Foals have been reported as describing the new album as “tropical prog” and “like the dream of an eagle dying” which from anyone else would sound impossibly pretentious. But with Foals, you know they’re taking the Mick.

“Both those things were said before the album was even written,” Yannis says.

So how would he describe it now? “As 11 new songs,” he deadpans.

But he admits it is very different from the first outing, which was, itself, a shock departure from what preceded that (there was consternation in some quarters that they had left big hitters like Hummer and Mathletics off their debut).

“We wanted to make something with a different specification; not the same formula as Antidotes. Our only goal is not to do the same thing again. That would be too much of an effort.

“We make the music we want to make and we give ourselves the freedom not to repeat ourselves. Some people will always be petrified by things they don’t expect, but for us, the album had to be the one we wanted to have... otherwise we wouldn’t bother doing it.”

So, far from being the new sound of Foals, Total Life Forever, looks like being yet another rapidly passing phase. “We’ve changed already,” he says in that wry self-effacing manner, which leaves you unsure where the joke ends and truth begins.

I believe him. The first single from the album is the sublime Spanish Sahara, a somnolent marvel a million miles away from the rhythmic pulsing of Cassius or The French Open.

But what inspired this dreamlike introspection, I ask, expecting an intellectual answer from the former Oxford University student. “It was just something we saw on an old cassette wrapper,” he says.

“It was an old map, and the name stayed in my mind for a long time. It’s not to do with any real place... it’s a state of mind.”

Foals play a homecoming gig at the Oxford O2 Academy on Wednesday.