Bloc Party Looking Inward for New Album

Posted on Sep 26th 2007 10:00AM by Jolie Lash
Comments

For the next two weeks, Kele Okereke and his British dance-infused rock combo Bloc Party, will continue their tour across the U.S. Though the four-piece hit the studio to lay down ideas for their third album, just before their current jaunt, Okereke told Spinner that he's happy to be back on the road in the States. For starters, while he may be spending quite a bit of time on an 18-wheeler, his creativity will roll on. "I'm always brimming with inspiration when I'm on the road," he said. "It's a great time to be reflective and to put stuff into yourself. I enjoy it a lot. You just have to use your time wisely."

Time management means Bloc Party will be using sound checks to write new tunes, but don't expect all of the group's next record to come from this Yankey trot. "At the end of the American tour, we'll have some new ideas from new places, but already I have a fairly good idea, of what I want [the songs on the new record to be]," he said.

Bloc Party's second record, 'A Weekend In the City,' had a lot to do with growing up, going out and a xenophobic post-London-Bombings Britain. The next installment will explore somewhere a bit different. "I think with this third record, its very much going to be a record about interior spaces," he said. "If 'Weekend In the City' was me complaining about going out and getting f---ed up, I think this is going to be a very intimate record about staying in and discovering aspects of yourself. And not in a grown-up, Coldplay/Snow Patrol way."

No 'Yellow' in their future, Okereke said he plans to dive deep into "human relationships, on a real kind of primal level," he explained, "what it means to feel desire and what it means to actually feel close to someone, or what it feels to feel lament -- the passing of closeness between people. It's very much going to be a record about internal relationships."

Bloc Party won't be dropping any of their new tunes, penned or in-progress on their current trek. A December, U.K. single is a possibility, but if that happens, the release will be the only time fans will get any new BP until the third album thanks to Okereke's YouTube fears.

"That was the one thing that annoyed me mildly about 'Weekend In the City' tracks. We played them, I guess a year before the album came out, and now in the age of YouTube, everyone's got a camera phone," he sighed. "People were getting really attached to these nascent versions of songs but they still [weren't] finished and they weren't anybody else's property really and I think this time around we're gonna present people with an album."