Pages tagged “bloc party”

Sound the silent alarm, kids, because Bloc Party's crossing the pond this summer. Although the cheeky British quartet is currently holed up in a studio assembling the third Bloc Party LP, once the weather gets warmer the lads will be motivating folks to move at clubs and festivals across the western hemisphere.

The band's not in "Flux" about benefiting the environment or choosing sides in the bizarre London mayoral race. For a taste of Bloc Party's angular aural appetizers, check out Paste's video footage of the band's performance at last year's Austin City Limits Festival.

Bloc off these dates:

July
28 - Pomona, Calif. @ Glass House
29 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ Mayan Theatre
30 - San Francisco, Calif. @ Fillmore

August
1 - Chicago, Ill. @ Lollapalooza Festival
5 - Philadelphia, Pa. @ Fillmore at Theatre of Living Arts
6 - New York, N.Y. @ Webster Hall
7 - New York, N.Y. @ Webster Hall
9 - Baltimore, Md. @ Virgin Mobile Festival
15 - Hohenfelden @ Highfield Festival
21 - Dublin @ Marlay Park
23 - Reading @ Reading Festival
24 - Leeds @ Leeds Festival

September
6 - Toronto, Ont. @ V Festival

Related links:
BlocParty.com
Bloc Party on MySpace
Feature: Rip It Up and Start Again—Bloc Party's grand return

Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.

Shouldn't it be like this more often? Band comes up with new song, tests it on the road a few times, and then leaks the tune digitally well before it debuts as a radio single? Maybe fans could even name their own price for an mp3!

Well, okay, Bloc Party didn't take things that far. But the band certainly isn't shying away from the fact that its new song, "Flux," has started to spread all over the Web well before its intended release date on Nov. 12 via Wichita Records. The group's website has been directing online media outlets to a YouTube video of Bloc Party performing the number live at Madison Square Garden, so have a look:

More information on the boring old traditional CD release is said to be forthcoming.

Related links:
Paste: Bloc Party talks touring, crisps
Bloc Party on MySpace
The Columbia Spectator reviews a Bloc Party show

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

Fresh off a three-continent stint, Bloc Party is about to embark on its ninth U.S. tour, this time with Deerhoof and Smoosh as support. We shot drummer Matt Tong an e-mail from sunny Atlanta with some mild trepidation that we’d bring to mind some bad memories. After all, his lung collapsed here last November, and the band had to cut its winter tour short.

Since then, Bloc Party has played LiveEarth and several fests in London—including the Reading Festival—in support of the February release A Weekend in the City. The band kicks off its next series of U.S dates tomorrow in Chicago (see below).

Paste: You've recently hit Spain, Japan and Australia. What are the band's sentiments of the tour so far?

Matt Tong: We've always considered ourselves very fortunate to have such a far-reaching appeal. The travel never gets boring and if you're smart, you can always find things to do on tour to keep your mind active.

Paste: It's been about nine months since your lung collapsed. How are you feeling these days?

MT: Not bad. I was so wasted at the time due to your liberal doses of morphine that it feels like it happened in a different lifetime. I've never enjoyed the Tyra Banks show so much, or been so itchy upon leaving a hospital. I'm not allowed to scuba dive so you're not gonna see me under the sea any time soon, but I'm still rocking out, so I can't complain.

Paste: What's been your favorite crowd yet?

MT:: Honestly, people have been very warm everywhere this year, though I must say, we were all really surprised with the response we got when we played in Australia and New Zealand this summer.

Paste: Does the Reading Festival have a U.S. equivalent?

MT: No. Hmm, unless you guys have a festival where people throw chairs at you if your band is somewhat incongruous with the rest of the bill.

Paste: Who did you look forward to seeing the most at the festival?

MT: !!!, because they are a consistently quality group.

Paste: You're residing in Berlin and your bandmates are in London. What kind of effect is it having on the band?

MT:I don't get it really. Berlin's only an hour away from London on the plane. No one seems to think it's funny that Karen O (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) lives in L.A. and the rest of her band are in N.Y. Last time I checked, that was a five-hour flight. And three different time zones. I moved with the proviso that I would still be where I have to be regarding band arrangements. It's no skin off my back to come back to London to rehearse. Man, if the Tube's so crap that if breaks down en route to the practise room it takes just as long as if I was in a different country!

Paste: What did you do during your short break before your Chicago date tomorrow?

MT: A bit of recording. We're having a go at a new track, which we're sort of writing as I speak. I can't offer anything other than that--it's a secret. Also, we're still writing it.

Paste: Got any tricks up your sleeve for your new material?

MT: Tricks? I hope so. I think our new stuff is going to be a lot less textured than the last record. I think the third studio incarnation of Bloc is going to be a bit like the rawer earlier Bloc, but with experience.

Paste: Since this is your ninth U.S. tour, are you looking forward to anything in particular in America? Any time I travel to London, I bring home suitcases of Walkers Crisps.

MT: Walkers?! They're so dirty! I tell you, back in my day, Smiths Crisps used to rule the roost. I tend not to bring home too many trinkets from tour these days, luggage allowances are a killer. I like being in America, but I can't really single out a particular reason why, I just have a nice time there. People are generally way more positive than the English. Actually, I'm looking forward to catching the start of the NFL season.

Paste: Did you have any hand in picking Smoosh and Deerhoof for the U.S. tour?

MT: Yes, we normally make suggestions about support bands. Smoosh did half of our first US tour this year and were an absolute joy to play with. Those young ladies are really, really gifted and have this knack for writing incredible bittersweet pop songs. They had a new song called "Promises" that they were playing on tour with us and it was making everybody cry. Asy's like a young Brian Wilson or something, though I sincerely hope she doesn't go nuts and Chloe is doing stuff on the drums at the age of 13 that I clearly can't do now. Deerhoof are a band I've been dying to see for ages. I got turned on to them relatively late, but I think they're excellent. I can't wait to see them play.

Neither can we:

September
7 - Chicago, Ill. @ The Hideout
9 - Montreal, Quebec @ Osheaga Festival
11 - Milwaukee, Wisc. @ Pabst Theatre
12 - Indianapolis, Ind. @ Egyptian Room
13 - Columbus, Ohio @ Promo West Pavilion
14 - St. Louis, Mo. @ The Pageant
16 - Austin, Texas @ ACL Festival
19 - Mexico City @ National Auditorium
21 - Houston, Texas @ Warehouse Live
22 - Dallas, Texas @ House of Blues
23 - Tulsa, Okla. @ Cain's Ballroom
25 - Nashville, Tenn. @ City Hall
26 - Covington, Ky. @ Madison Theatre
28 - Toronto, Ontario @ Ricoh Coliseum
29 - London, Ontario @ John Labatt Center
30 - Ottawa, Ontario @ Capitol Music Hall

October
2 - Providence, R.I. @ Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel
3 - New York, N.Y. @ Madison Square Garden

Related links:
BlocParty.com
Bloc Party on MySpace
Rip it up and start again: Bloc Party’s grand return

Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com.

In 2003, Kele Okereke—the industrious frontman for a then-unknown guitar band named Bloc Party—managed to sneak copies of his group’s single into the influential paws of both Franz Ferdinand vocalist Alex Kapranos and beloved Radio One DJ Steve Lamacq. Okereke’s hubris soon became the stuff of art-rock legend. With the help of Lamacq, and Kapranos’ offer to let the band open for Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party signed to Vice/Atlantic and released its debut long-player, Silent Alarm, in 2005.

Almost immediately, Bloc Party seemed destined to become another young, quasi-cursed band recognized more for its trail of hype—NME fawning, hipster clamoring, thin comparisons to Joy Division—than the sounds it made. Two years later, facing down a seemingly inevitable backlash, Bloc Party confronts a classic sophomore conundrum: How does a band tinker its formula to re-excite the streets, while still sounding enough like itself to stretch its cachet?

Okereke and bassist Gordon Moakes are in New York City promoting A Weekend in the City, Bloc Party’s hysterically anticipated second effort, and Okereke and I are trying to make lunch plans. The band’s publicist tells me Okereke is looking for something “really American,” and we arrange to meet at the Waverly Restaurant, a tiny West Village diner with an enormous plastic menu, wood-paneled walls, red vinyl booths and a framed, autographed picture of Mötley Crüe nailed above the bar. Today, as every day, frantic, sweaty servers in black pants and white shirts are slamming plates and saucers into dish bins, hollering into the kitchen and shoveling French fries onto chipped oval platters.

“I Will Survive” is playing on the radio. Okereke is distracted, fiddling with his phone, periodically asking me to taste his water, and whispering about whether the dark-haired man ordering at the counter is actually Al Pacino. Okereke is willing to talk about Bloc Party, although he appears infinitely more interested in conversational strains that have less to do with emergent British rock bands and more to do with Joanna Newsom’s new record or modern American pop music or Beyoncé or the scope of the Waverly’s dessert menu. An hour later, I know that Okereke doesn’t like pumpkin pie or Bob Dylan, but I still can’t quite figure out what it must have felt like for his band to be declared the newest occupiers of Britain’s ever-tenuous rock throne.

Just a few days earlier, after getting injured playing American football, Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong pounded through the band’s set with a collapsed lung and landed in an Atlanta hospital, where doctors intervened, treating Tong and advising him not to travel for several weeks. So Bloc Party was forced to cancel its remaining U.S. shows—22 dates in all—with Panic! At the Disco. “[Tong] was working out so hard for the Panic! dates that he actually destroyed his lung,” Okereke sighs. “He’s a real monster when he plays.” Okereke isn’t numb to the poetic nuance of a musician soldiering through injury, hunching over an instrument despite being barely able to breathe. “It’s a shame it was for a room full of Panic! At the Disco fans,” he snorts, before mumbling something about 13-year-old girls.

Okereke and Moakes jetted to New York for a handful of press days before retreating to London; the cancellations (including two sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden) were devastating to the band and its American fans but, today, Okereke seems almost a relieved to be heading home. “This short stint touring reminded me that we’re going to be going for the whole year next year, so any time at home…” He trails off. “It can be hard being away from loved ones for a long time, but [touring allows for] a very immediate response to what we create. Playing to a room full of people who are losing their minds is a great thing.”

A Weekend in the City is based loosely around the pacing and noise of contemporary urban life—the crush of public transportation, the skronk of horns, the hot hum of 10,000 simultaneous conversations. “I think the actual physical space of the city is fascinating,” Okereke nods. “The speed at which people move—I’ve always been inspired by the rate of cities.” New track “Hunting for Witches” opens with a stream of blips and static, bits of found sound and samples fading into a prickly guitar melody; the cumulative effect not dissimilar to trying to cross town and listen to your iPod at the same time. “It starts with a field recording of me on a train,” Okereke says, “and then walking to my house—it kind of morphs into a song, catching the [exterior] sounds and incorporating them [into the track].” Still, Okereke, who has lived in London since 1988, is now prepared to ditch the city for more novel climes. “I would very much like to leave. I’ve been living there all my life. Everyone I know in London has come to London from other places, for university or for work. I had my love affair [with the city] earlier than most people,” he admits.

A Weekend in the City features all the spindly, textured guitars that earned the band a deluge of comparisons to Gang of Four and Franz Ferdinand, but it feels warmer, richer and bigger than its predecessor.

“I think ultimately there are certain musical tics that are very much a part of our sound, and they’re still there,” Okereke explains. “But I think there’s more texture and a larger palette [on the new album]. But it’s still very much a Bloc Party record. It’s not really scratchy or minimal. The first one wasn’t, either. The first one was very layered and atmospheric.”

Like any member of an emerging band, Okereke sounds alternately tired and defensive of Bloc Party’s presumed influences and the ways in which they’re hollered, incessantly, by the press—as plenty have since pointed out, in 2005 it was hard to find an article about the band that didn’t also mention Franz Ferdinand. “I don’t think [the comparisons] necessarily hurt us,” Okereke says. “If anything, that sort of labeling really made us conscious of this new record, to do something sonically that was as far from that as possible—from Gang of Four, Franz Ferdinand, New Order. The aim was to make something that didn’t sound like anything from the past. You know, to sound like a rock band in the 21st century, just as inspired by [those bands] as modern pop music.”

After lunch, Okereke, his publicist and I stuff ourselves into the backseat of a cab, scooting up Sixth Avenue to Atlantic Records’ New York offices. Okereke has another interview scheduled, so I meet up with Gordon Moakes. Along with Okereke and the other journalist, we’re escorted into a conference room with two leather couches, a couple of electric guitars and a glass coffee table with a big pair of scissors on it.

Moakes, sipping bottled water, appears equally ambivalent about the premature finale of the band’s U.S. tour. “It was the longest tour we were ever to have played. It was a real challenge for us. We felt like we stood out slightly on the bill, in terms of being a bit more left-of-field. But I think we were making an impact. It was so early, we had hardly gotten going, so we have mixed feelings about [the cancellations]. We did talk about [finding a replacement drummer] because our drum tech is quite familiar with the songs, and it could have worked. But it just wouldn’t have felt right, not having Matt there; it would have felt weird. So we felt that the best thing for him was to relax and recover, not worry about trying to get back to finish the tour.”

Bloc Party signed up celebrated producer/remixer Jacknife Lee to man the knobs for A Weekend in the City, banking on his experience tweaking a startling variety of bands and sounds—from U2 to Run DMC. “It’s funny, because in the beginning of last year, we knew we had to start thinking about [a producer],” Moakes explains. “We knew we wanted to try something new. There were several names that came up, and his was one that registered with me, kind of vaguely, and then I forgot about it. We tried out a number of people. And then we got around to actually having the record written, and we were still trying to decide and somebody said ‘What about Jacknife Lee?’ The Snow Patrol album [he worked on] is a really interestingly produced record. And I had been a huge fan of Compulsion, which was [Lee’s] first punk band. And he’d obviously done some DJ/electronic things, so it worked for this record. He sort of spanned the gap.”

With most tracks already written, demo’d, and tested live, Bloc Party settled into Grouse Lodge Recording Studios in rural Ireland, eschewing the record’s main inspiration—London—for the hushed calm of Rosemount, a small village about an hour outside Dublin. Moakes didn’t miss the buzz: “The flat that I’m about to move out of was super noisy, on a main road in East London. The noise of the street seems to echo up from a back alley into my room; it’s just that loud of a place. Shouting, drunkenness. We get a lot of ambulances and police cars and sirens. It’s hard to tune it out. We started the songs on the road, but we wrote most of the record in the heart of East London. The funny thing is that the recording was done in the countryside. After spending all this time in London, thinking about London and writing about London, we wanted to make it in London. But when we sat down with [Jacknife Lee], he said that he had to have us in isolation for four weeks. ‘I want your absolute concentration, I don’t want you drifting in and out. You need to be there, on hand, at every moment, so we can record at all times.’ So we went out into the country, in Ireland, and it was the complete opposite of what the songs were about. Complete peace and quiet.”

After a full year of nonstop press (and an album directly inspired by urban noise), the idea of Bloc Party heralding some unexpected quietude isn’t particularly shocking. It seems only appropriate that the band hole up in the countryside, block out the buzz and reconnect with its sound. The product, A Weekend in the City, is much like the process —starting in stillness, growing louder and louder until it’s teeming with sonic bustle. It’s a declaration that Bloc Party is back, and ready to let its noise echo through the streets.

Matt Tong is all better and Bloc Party is coming back to the U.S. The new tour starts March 11th in Seattle.

To America’s disappointment, they had to cancel their November/December tour with Panic! At the Disco when their drummer suffered a collapsed lung before a show in Atlanta. This time around, they’ll be headlining and playing all new music from their sophomore album, A Weekend in the City, due out on February 6th. According to the band, Weekend is inspired by singer Kele Okereke's interest in "the living noise of a metropolis." Some indie retailers will be giving away a 7" single of "The Prayer" with the album.

This is going to be Bloc Party’s very first headlining tour in support of the new album. For support, they’re bringing along Albert Hammond Jr. of The Strokes, Final Fantasy, Sebastian Grangier, The Like and Smoosh, all on various dates.

A pre-sale is happening right now on Marshals, Bloc Party's fan club website, and regular sales start January 13th.

Bloc Party Official U.S. Tour Dates:

March
11-Seattle, WA @ Paramount Theatre
12-Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum Theatre
13-Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
15-Austin, TX @ SXSW
17- Francisco, CA @ Concourse Exhibition
19-Los Angeles, CA @ Wiltern Theatre
20-Los Angeles, CA @ Wiltern Theatre
23-Chicago, IL @ Congress Theatre
24-Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak Theatre
25-Toronto, ONT @ Kool Haus
27-Montreal, ONT @ Metropolis
28-Boston, MA @ Orpheum Theatre
30-New York, NY @ United Palace Theatre
31-New York, NY @ United Palace Theatre

Related Links:
Marshals-Bloc Party's fan club website
Official Bloc Party website
Bloc Party on Myspace

Bloc Party’s second full-length album, A Weekend in the City , is set for release on Vice Records February 6 of next year. The band’s debut, Silent Alarm , was critically hailed, putting the band into the global spotlight. Afterwards, it went on to play hundreds of sold-out shows in support of the record.

Weekend in the City addresses the postmodern angst that accompanies life in a booming metropolis – the currents of traffic, lines of people, quiet moments of peace, and everything in between. Produced by Jackknife Lee (U2, Snow Patrol), and recorded in Dublin, Ireland, the album is expected to be a brilliant follow up to the band’s debut.

Banking on the success of its full-length debut, Silent Alarm, Bloc Party will release a remix of the disc on Sep. 13 on Vice Records. Appropriately titled Silent Alarm Remixed, the album will come with a limited edition bonus disc including b-sides that were previously unavailable in the U.S.

Track list:

1. Like Eating Glass (Ladytron Zapatista Mix)
2. Helicopter (Whitey Version)
3. Positive Tension (Jason Clark of Pretty Girls Make Graves remix)
4. Banquet (Phones Disco Edit)
5. Blue Light (Engineers ‘Anti-Gravity’ mix)
6. She’s Hearing Voices (Erol Alkan’s Calling Your Dub)
7. This Modern Love (Dave P. and Adam Sparkle’s Making Time remix)
8. The Pioneers (M83 Remix)
9. Price of Gasoline (AUTOMATO Remix)
10. So Here We Are (Four Tet Remix)
11. Luno (Bloc Party vs. Death From Above 1979)
12. Plans (Replanned by Mogwai)
13. Compliments (Shibuyaka Remix by Nick Zinner)