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Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke on Silent Alarm's biggest tracks

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When Bloc Party released their debut album Silent Alarm, it was a lightning bolt moment.

The kind where you don’t quite know what you’re hearing, but you know it’s special.

Released in February 2005, Silent Alarm was both earnest and frenetic.

By April that year, it had charted in 18 countries and was well on the way to shaping the wave of dance-rock that followed.

By July, Bloc Party were one of the most anticipated acts on the Splendour in the Grass line-up, and by January of 2006, four songs off the album landed in the triple j Hottest 100.

So, did Bloc Party have any idea at the time what sort of impact the album would have?

Frontman Kele Okereke says they were just trying to avoid being labelled post-punk revivalists. 

Okereke joined Gemma Pike on The J Files to share how Silent Alarm was made.

Here's what he said.

Silent Alarm

By the time we arrived in Copenhagen to start recording we’d already released the Banquet EP, which was basically our demo.

That EP had started to get international recognition. Banquet was starting to feature regularly in places, so we knew that something was starting to happen.

Although we were being described in the media as these kind of post-punk revivalists, that couldn’t be further from where we saw the music that we wanted to make.

We were very much into a lot of American underground music. We were into post-rock music. Bands like Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

There’s a tremendous use of atmosphere and space in that music so we wanted to bring that across.

We wanted there to be dancefloor moments.

Listen to the Bloc Party J Files here

One of the things that bonded us as people, as a band, in the beginning was that we would go to clubs together and we’d dance, and we’d party. That was a big part of what we were about.

So, we wanted there to be a nod or a wink to the atmospherics and the dynamics of dance and electronic music. We didn't want it to just feel pale and grey and skinny. We wanted it to have body and life.

I don’t want to sound be disparaging about post-punk because a lot of that music has gone on to influence me. I was just conscious that I didn’t want us to be solely known for that. 

Seeing that stuff in print always feels like a reduction or a caricature of what it is you’re trying to do, so your instinct is to rebel against it and go against what people think or assume about you.

That’s a pattern that has continued with us as a band and with me as a songwriter. 

I'm constantly trying to prove people wrong. That's something that's followed me throughout my career.

Making Silent Alarm, we were conscious that we wanted to do something that felt completely in technicolour. That it wasn’t just this spiky, scratchy, cool sounding thing. It was important to show that there was a sense of depth and roundness to the music.

That was the only game plan. We knew that we had to prove ourselves.

It was the first time we’d really stayed away from home for a long period of time. We went to Copenhagen to make this record and we were there for six weeks.

When we got there, nothing worked and we thought, this is going to be a complete nightmare.

We were also conscious working with Paul [Epworth - producer] that we didn’t want to be led in a direction that we didn’t want to go down. We were a new band and we were protective of what we were doing. 

It’s hard when you work with a producer. You have to really trust that you’re coming from the same place and you want the same things. Or before you know it your idea or your vision can get warped.

There was a certain amount of, 'What’s happening here? Do we really want to do this? Is this the direction that we really want to take the music in?'

There were some moments where we butted heads. 

At the time we didn't really know what was going to happen with this music.

After the record was released and it went on to become successful – not only in the UK but all around the world – when you think back retrospectively to what you experienced during the making it can feel a lot more rosy than it was.

I remember there was quite a serious argument about putting a mandolin on 'This Modern Love'. Nobody in the band wanted to do it and Paul was like, 'You have to do this'.

There was a weird standoff where we were like, 'No, we don’t actually want to do this'.

I don’t really know how it got resolved but the mandolin ended up being on it and it was fine.

Now I can totally appreciate where the intention came from but at the time I wanted to strangle him.

'Like Eating Glass'

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The songs on the album came about in two different ways.

There was a collection of songs that we were touring and playing live at the time, and there was a collection of songs that we wrote specifically for the album. 

‘Like Eating Glass’ was something we wrote for the album so it was something we hadn’t played live prior to recording. 

I don’t know where it came from. I remember I was listening to Marquee Moon by Television and I really liked the sound of the guitars. That driving, dry sound. That’s where I was hoping it would go.

But then Russell [Lissack – guitarist] took it somewhere else with this cascading wash of sound that starts the song and our drummer [Matt Tong] really beefed up the rhythm. 

It’s embarrassing but I can’t really think too much about where that song came from.

I don’t really have many strong memories of writing it. It’s weird because it’s a song that lots of people hold dear because it’s the one that opens the album, but I don’t really have any sexy stories about that one.

'Helicopter'

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When we were making the album, we didn't really know how any of the music was going to be received. It’s interesting to think that 'Helicopter' is one that people have really connected with. 

It's quite a tricky time signature in the pre-chorus and our producer Paul really wanted us to take that out. He felt that it would work better on radio if we just had it straighter. But we were like, 'No. This is the song. This is how we hear it, and this is how we want it'.

That was an argument we won and I’m glad we did.

I remember us rehearsing in a room in West London before we recorded the album and it took a moment for us to get our heads around it as well. I’m glad that we persevered with that one.

'Positive Tension'

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When I think of 'Positive Tension' I think of 'Psycho Killer' by Talking Heads. 

I remember going to Matt’s house and him playing a Talking Heads record and I remember thinking how cool it sounded. There was just no fat on the track. It felt very lean and very muscular and I loved it. 

That’s what I was thinking about where the track should start and then Russell brought in a very different dimension. A very spacious, atmospheric feel to the music. And then it goes full on Nirvana at the end.

With the lyrics on Silent Alarm there was no game plan or overview. Most of the time I was just singing the first thing that came to me. You’d connect to it and then you’d have to spend the whole year explaining what it is you were writing about.

It was odd because to me it was really spontaneous. Lots of the lyrics on that album were very spontaneous.

'Positive Tension' was about those reality television competition shows like The X Factor or American Idol. These young people being so desperate to make something happen and just feeling like that they were going about it in the wrong kind of way.

It was the wrong vehicle to make anything really important happen. That was the kind of perspective that I was thinking about. It was really about youthful naivety.

There's something really sinister about the way young people are preyed upon on those formats. It just seemed wrong to me. Those kids will be chewed up and spat out before they can even realise what's happened and that’s supposed to be our entertainment.

'Banquet'

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I wanted it to sound like Adam Ant. That was the only thing that I was conscious about.

I've always thought that Adam Ant was a cool character and his music has always had this semi-tribal feel. This dark, insistent, tom-heavy music and I wanted it to have that sort of feel. With the interlocking guitar work it took on another quality. 

The way Russell and I were playing the guitar in the verses, it seemed like such an obvious thing that bizarrely no one was really doing. That kind of call-and-response type playing. 

It hearkens back to Marquee Moon to me because there’s lots of that interlocking guitar work. That was where that came from. I wanted something that felt sinister but sexy.

'Two More Years'

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'Two More Years' actually wasn’t on the album. We didn’t record it in Copenhagen. We recorded it in the UK, six months after the album came out. (It was included as a bonus track on the album’s re-release).

We've always been quite creative and I think it was important to us to stay creative on the road. Something we enjoyed was writing music together. 

It can be hard on the road when you’re a band. You can feel a little bit like a jukebox, that you’re just playing these songs that people love.

We were adamant that we wanted to still feel like a band, to still feel like we were creating. That song was something we recorded after the album came out.

We made Silent Alarm without really knowing how it was going to be received but after it had been received so well there was a sense of 'where do we go now?'

I think it just felt right for us to create something that had a sense of poise about it. 

It’s still a driving song about loss and heartbreak but it’s not as frenetic as the rest of the album. It’s more of a ballad.

As told to Gemma Pike on The J Files

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Music (Arts and Entertainment)