Bloc Party

Original DiS biog:

Bloc Party (they were formerly listed on these pages under the name Union) are a four piece from London who peddle a fine line of taut riffology, sounding not unlike that ever-popular New York five piece duelling with Fugazi in an art rock-shaped blender. With tunes to boot. Dynamic, wirey entertainment.

Think: Gang Of Four, The Cure, The Strokes and all that schtick. They are fab.

Bloc Party are:

Kele Okereke - vocals, guitar
Russell Lissack - guitar, floppy hair
Gordon Moakes - bass and backing vocals
Matt Tong - drums, ties

After much A&R battling, they signed to Wichita in the UK for their record deal, and EMI for their publishing. They are also signed to Vice in the USA.

NEW DiS biog:

We first stumbled across Bloc Party when they played under the name The Angel Range as the first-on at Camden’s Dublin Castle at the tail end of 2002. We don’t actually remember much of it back then. They weren’t all that.

In fact, when DiS properly ‘stumbled across’ Bloc Party they were, for some unfathomable but thankfully short-lived reason, called Diet. They’d emailed and asked if they could send a demo and where it should be sent to. An unusually on-form DiS journo said “I’ll have that”. By the time the demo (on a plain CDR without even a track-listing to its name) reached us they’d changed the name to Union. It was, to use a journalistic cliché, like someone had fed The Strokes some very good amphetamines and introduced them to The Cure. It made us go ping! and then some. The tracks were This Is Not A Competition and The Answer. It got reviewed, and there was some rejoicing. “We’ve been offered gigs and everything,” Kele later said. Come mid-2003 and there was a second demo. Union and their friends Redjetson sat their arses in DiS’ new Stoke Newington abode and set about posting their CDs in packages together to various ‘industry’ folk. “Right messy bastards, they were,” one witness was heard to comment.

In the meantime, Kele had read with interest about a new band called Franz Ferdinand. They sounded like they were into the same sort of things as Union, so he went to one of their gigs. Spotting Radio One/6 Music DJ Steve Lamacq in the crowd, he handed him a CD. One was also thrust into the hands of Franz. Lamacq played the track She’s Hearing Voices on his Radio 1 show, declaring the song “genius” and inviting them to record a live session. At this point, the music industry’s ears began to pick up. By September, the band had discovered another Union in east London, so changed their name to Bloc Party – based on housing block parties (minus the ‘k’, just for aesthetic reasons) rather than anything to do with the Eastern Bloc – and got invited to play Franz’s now-legendary ‘warehouse’ gig at the Electrowerkz in London’s Angel, as part of the Domino label’s anniversary celebrations. Around this time they were also whoring themselves out to any venue that would have them, sometimes playing several London gigs in a week. That year they were to play no less than five times for DiS and DiS promotions offshoot Last Band Standing, including a hastily arranged gig at Brixton Windmill with Twisted Charm which saw them play to 12 people and barely covering the £40 they needed for the taxi in which the drums were carried. In December that year they played the Barfly with Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies and Reagan (now called Fans Of Kate), where they were seen for the first time by Simon White, the one-time Menswe@r guitarist (ask your big brother) who is now Bloc Party’s manager, at which he rejoices.

2004 is when things really did go crazy. The A&R men pounced on them and deals were offered left, right and centre. Before anything was signed they put out She’s Hearing Voices on 7” on Trash Aesthetics, the label run by a couple of young chaps called Rob and Tim (the latter had promoted the first ever Angel Range gig at the Verge in Kentish Town). After that came another one-off single for Moshi Moshi, entitled Banquet, which some people had the nerve to compare to The Police. The accompanying video was a low-budget b&w affair in which Kele looked utterly paranoid. Shoved on the road to learn their craft, they played a few dates with Graham Coxon. There was rejoicing at this. After all, he is God.

The band signed their publishing to The Man (aka EMI) but their record deal came from the cool, creative indie label Wichita. And there was more rejoicing. The first fruit for Wichita was the single Little Thoughts, a live favourite, at which point the hype for the band was creeping up to fever pitch. It hit the Top 40. And there was more rejoicing. It was followed up the frantic guitar duelling of Helicopter - its name chosen purely because Kele liked the word and not because XTC had a song of the same name – which became their first Top 30 hit. And, you guessed it, we all did rejoice just that little bit harder. Their ‘proper’ TV debut came not long after on BBC2’s almost-legendary ‘Later…’, which saw them guest alongside Interpol and Elton John amongst others. A truly bizarre moment. They played Helicopter and another live fave, the equally frantic Like Eating Glass.

At time of writing, their Paul Epworth-produced debut album Silent Alarm was due for release – copies having already been leaked onto the internet. There’s no doubt that 2005 is the year Bloc Party become absolutely massive. Brixton Windmill to Brixton Academy in the space of a 18 months is pretty good going.

by adie nunn, january 2005