© Â Chris Schwegler/Retna Ltd./Corbis
Foals' Jack Bevan is interviewed in the current issue of Rhythm, out now and available to buy here. The band have a new album out, What Went Down. Here the drummer talks through three of his favourite drum tracks from the album.
Knife In The Ocean
"Some [tracks] we did totally live with all of us playing, even with some of the vocals being used from the live take, but then on a couple of tracks I played cymbals and drums separately. We did that on the last track on the record, 'Knife In The Ocean'. There has to be a name for this type of beat. Basically it's a Purdie Shuffle but shuffling with the doubles on the left hand instead of the right. I had to do that without hitting the hi-hat and that's really hard because the hi-hat is what guides you through that beat. It's one of those things where you've only got to do it for the length of the song and it's so much concentration."
Night Swimmers
"[It was] this Fela Kuti-style Afrobeat thing I was playing. I did that for four minutes and then we cut it into a loop and overdubbed an electronic drum machine for an 808 kick and added percussion to it, so we Frankensteined that one. We'd never done that before. It is playable live but it's going to be a bit of a challenge. We were like, okay, let's treat this like a dance track and build it up and down. I'm really happy with how it sounds because the way the 808 interacts with the Fela Kuti-style beat I'm playing is quite cool. That was totally different."
© Joe Branston/Rhythm
Mountain At My Gates
"'Mountain At My Gates' we did to a click to halfway and then took the click off because we wanted to speed up by 5bpm, so it gets really fast at the end. We've always liked doing that, we've never been very much of a click track band. We like to naturally flow between tempos. Definitely live we'll pick up for those big moments and then slow back down again. It just feels more natural for us as long as it doesn't take off too much and sound frantic, it feels like it's getting more exciting sometimes."
Read more from Foals drummer Jack Bevan in the September issue of Rhythm, out now and available here!
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