The Bloc bandwagon has battened down doors and hatches and crossed the silvery waters of the channel to begin its latest jaunt across the continent. It's a while since we've toured Europe, and I don't think we've ever done it in summer so we're looking forward to sunny days on the autobahns, civilised afternoon drinks on cosmopolitan terraces, and kissing people on both sides of the face. For some of us, namely Matt, some sausage is surely to be enjoyed.
We've probably all got favourite spots on the map that we're looking forward to seeing again. Kele will as ever stray out into the urban hubbub of Paris, absorbing the sounds around him; Matt will finally get a moment to enjoy the first day in his new hometown of Berlin, and my favourite bit will be Scandinavia, where the air is clear and crisp, the venues beautiful and clean and the people warm and inviting.
Bringing this new record to the road has been a combination of our age-old fire and passion and some new tricks and sounds. We've resisted the accepted route of easing up on the gas and making the shows somehow more sedate. This is a rock band for whom the swell of excitement, the surge of the crowd and the clang and clank of distorted drums and guitars remains a pure fuel. We're just trying to find new ways to express it. We're writing loads of stuff as we go too, and to me it sounds edgier than ever.
Making this tour more enjoyable is the presence of one of our favourite bands full stop, Biffy Clyro. These guys couldn't have a sunnier, more enthusiastic attitude towards this life and of course there's the fucking guns-cocked majesty of their songs to boot. I cannot overstate what a pleasure it is to be playing with them. The only drawback for me is watching them trying to condense the sheer scope of what they're capable of into forty minutes every night. If you aren't moved by 'Living Is A Problem Because Everything Dies' then, sir or madam, allow me to show you the door.
G.x
On the streets here, rubbishy grey damp streets of London, place of a million faces, a million strangers, a handful of friends, we forge out slowly the pitter-patter of our daily lives, the bump-bump-bump of our heartbeat as it beats by like a sub-woofer in a passing race-mobile. So much is romanced about London - its grime, its rat-race glamour, the jigsaw of a thousand homes choc-a-blocked together along your street, that we forget quite how humdrum it is, how much it has in common with the suburbs, fields and high streets that lie beyond it. Have you ever read 'London Fields' by Martin Amis? It paints well this grey meadow we live in, and yet the most resonant feeling I had for the London Amis described was that it was as provincial as the small town I grew up in. That's London.
London is a ticking clock, daring you to outrun it, to bluff its sell-by-date, to squeak out through a gap before it crumbles around you, Indiana Jones-style. There's a bar on the corner of Bethnal Green Road that each night counts down the seconds to last orders on an LED and it's a bit like that. 20,000 seconds left. Tick tock tick tock. When do you start counting how long it is you've been here? More importantly, when do you stop? I've lived here for two years now properly; when our band started and even when we were first signed I used to travel in for everything. I kind of always knew there was a time limit on it. When I first lived here I was sleeping in our manager's spare room in Harlesden and I haven't been as depressed living somewhere since my first year at college. Not because of him I should point out, just because I was by myself. I couldn't find any rhythm in my steps, no inspiration in the streets around me. It seemed dark and oppressive and lonely and I could see myself just being enveloped by it. But now we've come to understanding, me and it. We've signed an entente cordiale. At first we kept ourselves to ourselves, nodding politely to one another. Then without realising it we built a bond from the things in common we didn't know we had. I started to marvel at its buildings, get lost in its cemeteries, trace its history with my fingertips and find a solace in the place I carved out in it. It budged over, made some room for me.
Now it is a home, as close to a home as something this big and gruff and grey can be. I've nested with the person I love, made a little verdant pocket of our own, an oasis in its brickwork. What more do you need? Exactly. It's become the repeating cartoon backdrop on my windows, the rest-spot between endless tours, the puzzle that spider-webs away from me, that I found a me-shaped hole to fit into. It's a three-dimensional vortex that has no pattern or reason but somehow can be made to balance, like some nightmarish algorithm that if you spend long enough at you can teach yourself how to solve.
I suspect it may have the last word though, that it will far outlast my attempts to grapple with it... but maybe I will still escape yet.
The record. It's done. You wouldn't believe what a mammoth task it is, from shaping a few rough ideas, to forging them into proper songs, to demoing, to the studio and all that happens to them there, to deciding how loud the rhythm guitar should be, to deciding what order they should appear, to packaging the whole thing with suitably evocative artwork. Exhausting! This record has been well over a year in the making... Listening back to the first song ideas we put to tape in January 2005, which remember was before even 'Silent Alarm' hit the shelves, I realise that we had some of the music for 'SRXT' and '7.18' even as far back as then, but it took a while to shape some of those ideas into what 'A Weekend In The City' has become. Now our baby is ready, we have birthed it and are about to see it toddle off to its first day of school, and to see what the world will make of our special new offspring. We hope you like the little chap.
A word on the artwork. At the time we were discussing ideas for the sleeve of this record Kele brought along a book called 'A Modern Project' by Rut Blees Luxemburg, and we 'oohed' and 'aahed' while pawing through the pages and saying how nice everything looked. Can we have something like this? We said. After a short time thinking about it we then asked, actually, can we just have this? And the phone call was made. Some of you may be familiar with her picture 'Towering Inferno' which formed the cover to Mike Skinner's 'Original Pirate Material'. Rut, who hails from Germany, has a great way of capturing the London we know, one of a strange calm hidden inside its imposing tower blocks and flyovers, of a dark intensity and yet an inspiring sort of blandness. This record is partly about the bustle of a big city but there is a restrained quality to how we've channelled that into the music and I think the pictures capture this. Rut was also kind enough to come and take some pictures of us for the sleeve, so look out for them.
Just now we're putting the finishing touches on a special edition DVD for the release which all being well will feature a little documentary about the making of the record incorporating footage of us in the studio shot by us. We're spending this last bit of December before Christmas doing a little bit of promotion in various parts of Europe. I should just say that Matt is doing great in New York having been taking it easy since his lung was re-inflated. We missed you buddy, enjoy the break and get limbered up for the next tour. The Bloc will be out in a venue near you in only a month, playing 'The Prayer' and a heap of songs that we've yet to do live. Excited?
G.x
Bloc Party have finished a month at Grouse Lodge in County Westmeath in Ireland laying down licks and chops for the next record. It rained a lot but it was a truly enjoyable experience: in between the riffola and the twiddling we could be found walking through moist green meadows, exploring haunted houses, shooting at stuff with guns and generally lording it about as if the Irish Potato Famine never happened. When you think of Ireland you think of bogs, Guinness, stew and the craic, not necessarily top-quality residential studios, but in Grouse Lodge we found very much the latter and all of the former. A relaxed atmosphere, a pub on-sight, and a month to piss around with countless guitars and a couple of drum-kits. Easy.
Jacknife Lee has guided us skilfully through the process, encouraging all kinds of thinking and attitude to get the best we can out of this record. We've all been banging and hitting things, detuning guitars, programming beats and making various kinds of racket. I guess we had big ideas for this album and Jacknife has given them the green light and urged us to go further. I shan't reveal too much just yet, but expect a song where Matt and I play drums simultaneously; some truly R'n'B-styled beats; Russell's work with a Big Muff pedal; the sound of a guitar amp being thrown off a first-storey balcony; at least one unplayable guitar solo; both eggshell-thin fragility and trouser-flapping hugeness; piano, glockenspiel, strings; you name it.
Right now we're completing a couple of weeks at a studio in London finishing a lot of the ideas we started in Ireland, doing some polishing and reassessing. There's a lot of vocals to do and enough time left to see if we've covered everything we wanted to do or if there's still sounds left to make. Not finished, but definitely coming round the corner into the home straight.
And we've been filming a lot of this stuff too, so expect so see a bit of that here soon too.
G.x
PS. Has anyone heard the Envy record 'Insomniac Daze' on Rock Action? Wow. Very stately and special. I urge you to listen.
We are in the final stages of recording. I have relocated to Kent to finish the vocals at Garrett's studio. Frantically writing and re-writing lyrics, chopping and editing song structures, whilst trying desperately to keep up with big brother. Backing tracks are finally becoming songs. The ideas that have been driving me mad for the last year, are being realised. It's a very tough process working out what to add to a song or to make it better not worse, but fuck it, I will be honest, and I will be brave. No use thinking about the past or what we've achieved. That's where so many bands fall down on second records, by trying to second guess their audience, with a supply and demand attitude. This record is going to require an investment, the same way Silent Alarm did, as all the really good albums do. I hope you guys like. I am half way through singing the vocals it's already bigger than anything we have ever done. I listened to Silent Alarm last week, felt embarrassed and proud at the same time, so much I would do differently now but that's always the way with art, that's why you carry on creating. We have become a better band thats for sure... thank you all for caring.
Kele