Oxford’s finest’s latest record was at once filthier and more beautiful than anything they’d done before. That’s according to frontman Yannis anyway, and who are we to doubt him? After all, he’s proved in interviews across the group’s career to date to be an arch truth-teller, with a fine line in philisophical thoughts. Here’s some of his most memorable…
On being an artist: “The more you create, the more you give away of yourself and all you are left with is a husk, with a carapace that will set itself on fire in 10 years’ time… once you’re on this road, it takes you to one place, a place that cleanses you but kills you. People die working in factories, I’d rather set my shell on fire.”
Open’er Festival – Poland – 04/07/2014
On the inherent tragedy of tennis player Andy Roddick: “He’s that doomed hero, an almost Greek mythological figure with the fastest serve ever and yet he can’t win a grand slam. You can tell it’s going to destroy him. I have an affinity with stuff like that. It’s the Titanic syndrome, basically.”
On the world running out of oil: “I don’t think it is necessarily a bad thing, on an abstract level… We’re so confident that this civilisation is it and we’re at the peak and it’ll forever continue forward. I like the idea of it all being washed away and starting afresh, in the way that the Mayans disappeared or you had the end of the Roman Empire.”
On older headliners at festivals: “You get people in their late 30s going to festivals, in their dungarees with a couple of kids, wanting to relive their adolescence, pretending they’re baggy again by watching The Stone Roses. They aren’t in touch with what’s going on now. I’m bored of seeing some dude from the ’90s headline, it means nothing to me.”
On EDM: “David Guetta is basically… it’s not even something that really makes my blood boil because it is just bullshit. It is an abomination but there needs to be bad music around. You need Jilly Cooper novels and pulp, trashy culture. Plus, some people like shit music.”
