Bloc Party

Bloc Party, Metric at Cardiff University, Tue 06 Feb

Review by Will Dean

A lot can happen in two years. Amongst other things: Katrina, Milosevic, World Cups, earthquakes, Top of the Pops, two Ashes, and Arctic Monkeys to name just a few things. »

University

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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»

Metric

Metric have always been a band who can adapt to any surroundings, make them their own and produce something brilliant. You might not imagine a bank to be an environment particularly conducive to creativity, but if a couple of months back you had ventured upstairs into the space above a certain financial establishment in Toronto, Canada, you would have come across a group of musicians birthing an incredible record, relishing the freedom they found their newest base to have given them rather than feeling any of the constraints you might expect. That group was Metric, and the record is their second album 'Live it Out'.

"We made the first album (2003's 'Old World Underground, Where are You') in Los Angeles, in the daytime, with a producer, which was kind of weird for us," says singer/synth player/mouthpiece Emily Haines. "But this time, with the space above the bank we had unlimited time and worked by ourselves at night. We did everything exactly the way we wanted and so this record feels much more representative of who we are."

Indeed, that Metric's second album was made in their hometown (with moral support from equally creative locals and childhood friends Broken Social Scene and Stars) certainly shows - 'Live It Out' exudes the unmistakable, natural, confident feel of a band who now know exactly what they're all about, having spent 2004 and 2005 growing together, living in ever-changing environments. One month they’d be sharing a flat in NYC with like-minded souls Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars, the next playing sold out residencies in Toronto; Emily would be playing solo piano shows in churches, while the band supported the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden. Make no mistake, Emily, guitarist (and now sole producer) Jimmy Shaw, bassist Josh Winstead and drummer Joules Scott Key have been together for long enough in enough different environments (including both London and New York) to know when something feels right. And this time it does.

If the LA-birthed 'Old World Underground, Where Are You' was the sound of Metric experimenting and trying to find their feet, 'Live It Out' is their vision fully realised, untainted by outside interference. ("The record company didn't interfere for even one minute," Emily laughs, "we just delivered it to them and that was it!"). So from the ever-evolving, six minute opener 'Empty', through 'Poster Of A Girl''s blend of paranoid, sung-in-French couplets and pulsating electro, the feedback-drenched 'Monster Hospital' (featuring the refrain "I fought the war but the war won") and the new wave fuzz of the climatic title track, 'Live It Out' is an album that takes many disparate influences and fuses them into a brilliantly coherent statement. Recalling at times the anything-goes attitude of Sonic Youth ("We played with them in Paris and they really inspired us as people," notes Emily), its ten tracks are at once thrilling, disturbing and unique. Without question, Metric have made a record with which they can now introduce themselves to the wider world.

"We've been allowed to be ourselves and that really shows," enthuses Emily. "All the bands that have ever inspired us never sounded like anyone else - that's what we were aiming to do this time around. With 'Live It Out' we've definitely achieved that."

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