Some
of the most important Bloc Party songs and albums
Lissack and Okereke were introduced to each other in
1998 in Essex where they were attending different schools. Not long
after that, they met again. It was 1999 at the Reading Festival when
they decided to form a band. Their bassist, Gordon Moakes joined after
that through a magazine advert and their drummer, Matt Tong went through
an audition in order to join.
They flirted with a lot of band names throughout the
years, names like Union, Superheroes of BMX, Diet or The Anger Range but
the name Bloc Party was their final decision in 2003 as a play on the
term of “block party” having nothing to do with either the Soviet Bloc
or the Canadian political party Bloc Quebecois.
In November 2003 their track “The Marshals Are Dead”
was offered to the general public on a compilation CD and after that
they released their debut single “She’s Hearing Voices”. The band
started gaining popularity after giving their debut single to Franz
Ferdinand lead singer Alex Kapranos and BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq.
This was the moment they’ve been waiting for and they even got the
chance to record in that same studio. Due to the exposure they gained
they were able to release another single, “Banquet/Staying Fat” and
ultimately signing with Wichita Recordings in 2004.
It wasn’t long before they were ready to release
their first album “Silent Alarm” which came in February 2005.
The album received very good reviews from U.S.
critics and this lead to an eighteen month tour of the States after the
release of “Silent Alarm”. As a result, their debut album was sold in a
much larger quantity than what they first expected: over 1 million
units. As further proof of their merit “The Chemical Brothers”
collaborated with Oekereke on their track “Believe” and at the end of
August of the same year they released a remixed version of “Silent
Alarm” called “Silent Alarm Remixed” which contained the original track
list as well as including remixes from various well known artists such
as Mogwai.
February 2007 saw the release of their second album
titled “A Weekend in the City”, although it was available to download
almost a half a year sooner, due to an unfortunate leak.
The album’s first single, “The Prayer” was released
towards the end of January and became the band’s best single according
to UK Top 40, stopping at a respectable number 4.
The second single off of “A Weekend in the City” - “I
Still Remember” – was the highest charting single in the U.S reaching
number 24.
On the 13th of November they released a
new single called “Flux”. This piece was quite different for Bloc Party
because they’ve never created an electronic song before. However, people
had nothing against it.
Their third album:
“Intimacy”, was launched in physical form on 27 October of 2008 but it
was available in digital format from 21 August 2008. This third album
had the same sound as their more electronic-influenced “Flux” single. A
remixed version of “Intimacy” was released in May of 2009 with the band
not planning to release anything new anytime soon. |
