PREVIEW: Bloc Party - 'Four'

Bloc Party have announced that their new album will be titled 'Four' and will be released later this summer.

The album, which is the follow up to their 2008 LP 'Intimacy', will be released on August 20 and has been produced by Death Cab For Cutie/The Mars Volta knob twiddler Alex Newport.

The quartet have released a video trailer for 'Four', which you can see by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking. You can also hear the new tracks 'Day Four', 'Octopus' and watch videos of live versions of seven of the tracks from the album...




'So He Begins To Lie'
'3X3'
'Octopus'
'Real Talk'
'Kettling'
'Day 4'
'Coliseum'
'V.A.L.I.S.'
'Team A'
'Truth'
'The Healing'
'We're Not Good People'



Speaking about the record on his blog IamKele.com, 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."

He continued: "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 3 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."

He continued: "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 June 19, followed by a show at Manchester's HMV Ritz on June 20 and wrapping up at London KOKO on June 21. They will also play a run of European and US shows throughout the summer.

Last year Kele courted controversy by claiming that while he was busy with his solo career, the remaining members of Bloc Party would be auditioning new singers to allow them to continue playing together. Bloc Party soon backtracked on the admission, which had been made to NME.