The world awaits the next big thing, and it seems the next big thing are Bloc Party. Lead singer Kele Okereke talks to Brian Boyd about taking the road less travelled to get to the place most people want to go
the! Next! Most! Important! Band! In! Rock! Bloc Party don't look or sound the part today. We find them in their bizarre Dublin hotel room just before their sold-out Dublin show at The Village. "This room is called the Peter O'Toole suite the one down the corridor is called the Brenda Fricker room," they say, looking bewildered and as if they've just stumbled onto the set of a weird David Lynch Irish hotel film. They're just off the boat and train from England - "That's what happens when you're signed to an indie," they explain and are in a let's-talk-ourselves-down sort of mood.
Their début album, Silent Alarm, which is released on February 18th, has been variously described as "the most anticipated album of the year", "a Must Have", "a glorious, menacing, touching and danceable as fuck affair" and "an agit-funk masterpiece". Shoe-horned into the Nu-Art-Rock box, alongside Franz Ferdinand and The Futureheads, a lot is expected from Bloc Party.
"There's not much we can do about it," says lead singer Kele Okereke. "We've only been going for about two years, so it's all quite sudden. The way we cope with all of it is by constantly reminding ourselves that all opinions about our music are subjective, we can't start worrying about public opinion, we're still trying to forge our own identity and not to be described in terms of other bands all the time."
Their fate, it seems, has been decided for them: Okereke will appear on the mandatory "indie rock guy singing vocals" track on the forthcoming Chemical Brothers album; the band are a major part of this year's NME "Brats" tour alongside The Killers, Kaiser Chiefs and The Futureheads in a role that was taken in years past by Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand and The Thrills.
Bloc Party kick up a very impressive punk-funk racket. They have the frenetic drum sound going on, the two intertwining angular guitars, the acrobatic vocalist and tons of that jerky Gang Of Four sound. It's the sort of sound a band makes when they grew up listening to Britpop, but were secretly more impressed by Sonic Youth.
Part of London's New Cross music scene, their musical intention was "to make rock music, but to express much more than rock 'n' roll," says Okereke.
"We want our music to be in full technicolour, for it to be a total technicolour experience. Something really huge, not just four guys on stage. It can be difficult, though, in this industry, which is so fashion-led. For instance, we used to be called The Union, but had to change our name because there was already a band using that name. When we became Bloc Party, we got a lot more interest, because people thought we were a new band, even though we were the exact same band as before."
Putting the "art" back into "chart" (sorry), the band don't make any allowances for the mainstream in their sound: "I'm not doing this to be number one," Okereke says. "In fact, the first-ever song we recorded was called This Is Not A Competition, and I really believe that setting out to be commercially successful is to really negate things."
Unashamedly bookish, the Bloc Party website contains quotes from Bertrand Russell and recommends authors such as Anne Sexton, JG Ballard and Richard Brautigan. The site also contains links to Naomi Klein's "No Logo" site and to the radical organisation, Refuse and Resist.
The above references led, in a circuitous manner, to a record deal. While reading an interview with Franz Ferdinand, Okereke noticed a similar set of reference points. Instead of sending Bloc Party's demo off to record companies, he sent a copy to Franz's Alex Kapranos. Kapranos wrote back saying he liked the cut of Bloc Party's art-rock jib (or words to that effect), and, even though he knew Bloc Party hadn't played much or released anything, he got them to support Franz Ferdinand on tour.
"I wrote that letter a day after we had met an A&R guy who sort of liked us, but kept saying things like 'you've got to make the songs shorter, make them poppier' and we were so disillusioned. Then we got the Franz Ferdinand tour. It's good because it's been on our own terms - we've had so many people telling us about 'being poppier', but that's not us. Anyway, a lot of great pop music has been edgy as well, so the two can be combined. All that advice and that was even before we had signed a deal."
The Ferdinand tour led to massive exposure and eventually a deal with a well-respected indie label, Wichita. A few singles went straight into the Top 40 and, in the middle of last year, the band went into Junior Senior's studio in Denmark (you've got to start somewhere) to record the album, Silent Alarm. The title, incidentally, refers to an article in New Scientist magazine about earthquake warning systems. The album was produced by Babyshambles producer Paul Epworth.
"When we got into the studio, it was like we were putting down all of our musical influences from 1976 to the present day," says Okereke. "The age we're at [ he's 23], we obviously were listening to loads of Britpop when we were growing up, but I for one was really into electronic music. So there's a lot going on in the sound. People do mention Gang Of Four, but I had never heard of them until somebody said we sounded a bit like them. The people I like - Kate Bush, Björk, Bowie and David Byrne - are all people who haven't compromised. And we don't intend to either. . ."
