Foals have been forced to cancel their forthcoming appearance at the Reeperbahn Festival after frontman Yannis Philippakis injured himself with a knife.
- The NME Big Read: Foals – “All anyone can express right now is confusion”
Philippakis took to Twitter yesterday (September 17) to make the announcement alongside a picture of his injured hand in stitches.
As a result, the band cancelled their appearance at Hamburg’s Reeperbahn festival on Friday (September 20) and have now enlisted The Maccabees’ Felix White to perform with them at tomorrow’s Mercury Music Prize awards show.
Drummer Jack Bevan posted a clip on Instagram stories of White rehearsing with the band today (September 18). He captioned it with: “Absolute hero @felixwhite is going to be playing the guitar with us at the Mercury awards tomorrow after Yannis’ hand misadventure.”
Philippakis, the band’s lead singer and one of two guitarists, wrote about his mishap: “Really sorry not gonna be at Reeperbahn festival on friday. Had a run in with a knife in Greece.”
Really sorry not gonna be at Reeperbahn festival on friday. Had a run in with a knife in Greece
?☠️?☠️?☠️?☠️ pic.twitter.com/ltxS2cJGyZ
— Yannis Philippakis (@YnnsPhilippakis) September 17, 2019
It’s unclear how he sustained the injury or whether it will affect future tour dates at this stage.
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Bevan’s Instagram story also shows Philippakis wandering around the stage with the group with his left hand bandaged up.
Earlier, this week the band shared remixes from their acclaimed 2019 album, ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (Part 1)‘.
Foals also recently shared ‘The Runner’, the second single to be lifted from the upcoming follow-up record ‘Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (Part 2)‘ – due for release on October 18.
Speaking to NME for their Big Read cover feature earlier this year, the band described the albums as “two halves of the same locket”, with ‘Part 2’ set apart to “contrast and give a different energy to the period”. They told us that the sister LP is “like a second round of ammo”, “a little more blistering” and “captures the vibe of their live shows” like never before and ending with “an unedited 10 minute wig-out.”
“It is a proper banger,” drummer Jack Bevan told NME of the album earlier this summer. “I just don’t think that people will expect that of ‘Part 2’. To me, as a cynical bastard, if someone was going to put out an album in two parts then you’d top-load it on the first one and then have all the boring stuff on the second one. Actually, we’ve flip-reversed it.”
This week the band will face competition from the likes of IDLES, Dave, Slowthai and Little Simz at the Mercury Prize 2019.