Bloc Party live in Sydney 2013 / Photo by Ashley Mar

Bloc Party Have Started Work On A New Album

March 17, 2015

Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke has confirmed the UK outfit are making a new album and have already begun recording.

Okereke broke the news on triple j this afternoon, confirming the band are “at the writing slash recording stage” and have about 18 ideas to work with. He said they hope to lay those ideas down in the next few months.

While in the studio, Okereke picked up a guitar and performed a surprise acoustic rendition of one of those unreleased new Bloc Party tracks, called Exes.

Okereke spoke about the possibility of another Bloc Party album with Music Feeds last year, saying the best way for the band to honour 2015’s 10th anniversary of their debut studio album Silent Alarm would be to “make more records”.

“I think that’s more important than revival or some kind of nostalgic experience,” he said. “I feel that the band isn’t some record – at this point it’s a collection of records – and I feel that the best way to honour that would be to make more records, not just to look back to where we were.”

Bloc Party first went on hiatus in 2009 following the release of their third album Intimacy, citing interpersonal conflict. They returned in 2012 to release their latest studio album Four and followed that up in 2013 with The Nextwave Sessions EP.

Okereke is in Australia now on a solo tour, backed by material from his second solo album, Trick, released in October. Tour details are available below.

Update: Listen to Kele Okereke’s performance of the work-in-progress track below, via triple j.