Yahoo News Foals keyboardist quits with aim to help tackle 'the imminent climate crisis'
Foals have announced the departure of their keyboardist, Edwin Congreave, who is going back to university.
Congreave will be enrolling in a postgraduate degree in economics from Cambridge University with the aim to tackle the “imminent climate catastrophe”.
His departure from the band leaves Foals as a trio after bassist Walter Gervers left in 2018.
Foals said in a statement: “We’re sad to say that we played our final show with Edwin Congreave as a member of Foals at All Points East festival in London. It was a helluva way to go out.”
The statement continued: “After 15 years of sweet music making and surfing the globe together he’s decided to hang up his musical boots to pursue other avenues of life.
“We met at a cocktail bar one sultry night in Oxford as techno-obsessed drop outs and could never have guessed what we’d achieve and experience in the coming years.”
The band also revealed that they have already begun recording music as a trio.
Congreave, in his own statement, thanked the rest of the band and said: “I hope it’s not too melodramatic to say that Foals saved my life – really. I’ve been moved over the years by messages from fans saying that our music helped shine a path through their hard times too. That will stay with me my whole life.”
He also went into detail on what plans he had for the future. “So what’s my new purpose? Next month I’m beginning a postgraduate degree in economics at Cambridge, and I hope in the next couple of years to join others in technical efforts to mitigate the imminent climate catastrophe. The future’s not what it used to be, as a good friend once sang.”
Edwin update x pic.twitter.com/gAy5OzzXcB
— FOALS (@foals) September 22, 2021
Congreave added that he was excited at the prospect of watching his former bandmates with fans in the crowd: “Looking forward to next year, I’m thrilled to once again be able to watch the UK’s best live band from their best angle – that is, I mean, from the crowd. See you there.”
The keyboardist has previously speculated that concerns over climate change had led him to question whether he should be in the band.
Last year, he told the BBC’s What Planet are We On? podcast: “This year I’ve had to kind of look at the question of whether I should be in the band – but if I didn’t go on this tour this summer then the obvious point comes up that someone else would do it.”
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