Welcome to our weekly podcast “Roots to Grooves”.
Each episode explores the music, life and careers of musical artists from their earliest beginnings through to their most recent releases.
On this episode Jay and Jesse discuss the career and creative approaches of London based indie rock band “Bloc Party”.
“Bloc Party” started out in the early 2000’s, led by frontman Kele Okereke. It took a while for their initial line-up to form with drummer Matt Tong recalling that it seemed as if Kele was always looking for a drummer, which he thought might be a bad thing. However upon listening to the band’s original material Matt jumped on board and the group began gigging around London road testing their songs. Matt later said that the reason he joined was due to Kele’s infectious determination and work ethic to succeed.
Their debut album “Silent Alarm” came about, most probably, due to a chance meeting at a Franz Ferdinand gig, where Kele handed out his demo CD to a couple of guys in the Franz band, as well as influential British radio DJ, Steve Lamacq, who was also at the show. After Steve played Bloc Party’s demo live on BBC Radio 1, it seemed obvious that the band would start releasing music from then on.
Fast forward to 2023 and Bloc Party have released 6 studio albums, toured the world multiple times, gone on hiatus and changed their line-up.
Join Jay and Jesse as they discuss the history of “Bloc Party” and their creative approaches to making music.
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