EAST LONDON CALLING
Feb 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Bill Murphy
Kele Okereke stares intently out a plate-glass window overlooking midtown Manhattan, and for a brief flash his eyes seem to search the rushing crowds and rooftops below for some kind of inspiration — or maybe it's more akin to information. At 25, he already exudes a calm and worldly demeanor, but it's also clear that he can't sit in one place for too long because there's still so much out there just waiting to be experienced.
“It was important for us to make sure our next record accurately reflected what being alive in the 21st century feels like,” he says suddenly, his short dreadlocks whipping across his forehead as he turns back toward the tape recorder. “In the way that iPods and laptops and high-speed travel and all this technology are a part of everyone's life, we wanted to allude to sampling and a synthetic sound system so that alongside traditional organic sounds like rock guitars and vocals, you could have the synthetic aspects — drum machines, synths, programs and glitches — and they would just co-exist. It wasn't intended to be an aftertaste. I wanted electronics to be as integral as the drums or the vocals because that's what life is now.”
On the surface it may seem like a radical move for a band that only a year-and-a-half ago was being touted by NME as the “anti-heroes of post-punk” as well as Britain's answer to the sleazy dissolution of The Libertines — another punk-rock juggernaut that went down in a hail of booze, drugs and bad publicity. Bloc Party's anything-but-quiet full-length debut Silent Alarm (Vice, 2005) was the antidote, with Okereke's fervent wail and angular guitar playing leading the charge. Joined by lead guitarist Russell Lissack, bassist Gordon Moakes and drummer Matt Tong, the Nigeria-born East Londoner and his mates managed to carve out something unique — a fiercely passionate hybrid of glam, garage punk, art-rock and pure adrenaline that soon had Bloc Party selling out venues all over the UK and Europe.
“We actually recorded Silent Alarm before we ever really toured,” Okereke says, “which since then I think has helped me become a more capable singer. I've wanted to try more things with my voice really — not just the 100-mile-an-hour full-on yelp. Now it's more about trying to convey range and dynamics. When we went into the studio again [last June], I was definitely conscious that my voice had to be in different places.”
Okereke's vocal delivery isn't the only thing that's different about A Weekend in the City (Vice, 2007). Recorded over a period of six weeks with producer Garrett “Jacknife” Lee (he of U2, Snow Patrol and Editors fame), the album incorporates everything from live strings to heavily processed drums, synthesizers, samples and ambient noise — much of it the unmistakable signature of Lee's expansive, hyper-stereophonic sound. What's more, the band has tapped into a sophisticated streak of songwriting prowess that threatens to leave their UK retro-rock-minded peers (Kasabian, anyone?) in the dust. And maybe it's about time.
DOORS OF CONCEPTION
It could be argued that work on A Weekend in the City began long before Bloc Party even committed a note of it to tape — in fact, ideas for the album began to take shape during the band's time on the road in late 2005 and early 2006.
“Matt and I tend to get a riff and a drum beat together,” Okereke says, “and then the other guys will come in. We recorded our sound checks on a MiniDisc player and listened back to the parts to see if they were working or not. That's essentially how it started.”
Before long, the band had sought out a wish list of key producers to test the waters, recording demo tracks with Ben Hillier (Blur, Depeche Mode) and Steve Dub (Chemical Brothers). “Jacknife Lee was the third guy we tried out,” Okereke explains, “and the one song we did with him [‘I Still Remember’] sounded great. He seemed to really be aware of what it was we needed to do.”
Lee had worked with Irish alt-rockers Snow Patrol at a fully restored Georgian-style estate called Grouse Lodge, and he recommended the studio to Bloc Party [see sidebar, “Grouse Hunting”]. “I knew what I wanted to do with the band,” Lee recalls over the phone — when reached by Remix, he was actually in between takes with Editors (another hot alt-rock combo from Birmingham) at the very same studio. “They're an unusual bunch, but I knew we'd get on. I talked to Kele about what my ideas were, and he told me what he wanted. We didn't do any rehearsals or anything — we just went straight in. We pretty much agreed on what we thought was necessary, so it was more of an instinctive thing.”
For Okereke, many of those studio instincts had been coaxed into action by a period of deep immersion in as many musical sources as he could get his hands on. “Jacknife had given me a few CDs to listen to,” he says, “everything from Amerie to [György] Ligeti. I'd already been listening to Missy Elliott and that sort of post-modern hip-hop, and then I was given a choral score by [Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki] called St. Luke Passion, and I listened to that obsessively for a while. A lot of composers, like Philip Glass, gave me inspiration — with Ligeti, you get this amazing sense of atmosphere and tone and really close discords and harmonies. If you're not a classical musician, you always have the idea that classical music is something that's ornate and pretty, but it was amazing to hear something that was completely dark and sinister and huge. It just really made me want to try something different. I mean, I don't think we set out to make a neo-classical record [laughs], but I do think we relied on that kind of atmosphere.”
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