Block Party Confirm Details of ‘Four’

Bloc Party front man Kele Okereke has spoken about the band’s new album ‘Four’, which he revealed very nearly didn’t get made at all. The band announced that ‘Four’, which is the follow up to their 2008 LP ‘Intimacy’, will be released on 20th August and has been produced by Death Cab For Cutie/The Mars Volta knob twiddler Alex Newport. The quartet have also released a video trailer for ‘Four’, which you can see by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.

Speaking about the record on his blog, the singer admitted that the band needed time apart from each other and very nearly parted ways before they’d even started work on ‘Four’. He wrote:

“We could have come clean from the get go, but to be honest we had no idea if anything was going to come out of these sessions. There was a big question mark over whether Bloc Party were ever going to make another record again. We were exhausted and bored and distant from one another. so in 2010 we all did our own thing, Gordon [Moakes – bass] had a baby, Russell [Lissack – guitar] joined Ash, Matt [Tong – drums] built a studio in his basement with his bare hands and I moved to New York to finish a book that I had been writing for the last three years.”

The singer then admitted that in 2011 he found himself longing to be back with his bandmates and asked them to reconvene, which they did. He wrote:

“Something became clear to me, I needed to put my band back together, I missed my friends. Even though I had made a record by myself I missed the way that my band worked, how little improvisations and suggestions would then go on to spark other ideas in me like wildfire. Being in Bloc Party always forced me to think on my feet. It turns out that everyone had been feeling the same way so we arranged to decamp to New York and start writing our fourth record and in that time it became clear to us that the only reason to be in this band was to make the sort of music that only the four of us could make.”

The band will preview their new album with three low-key shows next month. The trek kicks off with a date at Glasgow Garage on 19th June, followed by a show at Manchester’s HMV Ritz on 20th June and wrapping up at London KOKO on 21st June. They will also play a run of European and US shows throughout the summer.