Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 1

From playing chaotic house parties in their home city of Oxford to becoming major festival headliners across Europe, Foals' trajectory has been remarkable.

After more than a decade in the game, Foals again embrace a love for the unconventional with the bravest and most ambitious project of their career: not one, but two astonishing new albums: 'Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost'. A pair of releases, separate but related, they share a title, themes and artwork.

Eager to break the traditional pop song structure, the 20 tracks defy expectation. There are exploratory, progressive-tinged tracks which occasionally break the 10-minute mark alongside atmospheric segues which make the music an experience rather than a mere collection of songs.  Yet the band's renowned ability to wield relentless grooves with striking power also reaches new heights.

The albums' first single 'Exits' is a case in point, conjuring the image of a disorienting world via a contagious vocal melody. It's a fresh anthem for Foals' formidable arsenal, but also an ominous forecast."There's a definite idea about the world being no longer habitable in the way that it was," says frontman Yannis Philippakis. "A kind of perilousness lack of predictability and a feeling of being overwhelmed by the magnitudes of the problems we face. What's the response? And what's the purpose of any response that one individual can have?"

'Exits' signposts what to expect thematically from 'Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost'. The title is a warning that anything – from the tiniest fleeting moment of inspiration through to the planet's own biological diversity – can be under threat of being irrevocably erased.

It's a theme that permeates throughout the albums' material, as Foals mirror the public neuroses that have been provoked by our current cultural climate. Paranoia of state surveillance? Fear of environmental collapse? An overwhelming feeling of anxiety? It's all there in these apocalyptic songs.

It's particularly evident in the euphoric 'In Degrees' which imagines a future where your ability to talk to each other has been reduced to nothing. This approach is perhaps most vividly captured on 'Syrups', and the devastating closing pair of songs on 'Part 1', 'Sunday' and 'I'm Done With The World (& It's Done With Me)'.