Equally inspired by
Sonic Youth,
Joy Division,
Gang of Four, and
the Cure, East London art punkers
Bloc Party mix angular sonics with pop structures. Consisting of singer/guitarist
Kele Okereke, guitarist
Russell Lissack, bassist/singer
Gordon Moakes, and drummer
Matt Tong, the band was formerly known as
Angel Range and
Union before settling on
Bloc Party.
Okereke and
Lissack met each other through mutual friends at the Reading Festival, and discovered that they had musical tastes as well as friends in common.
Tong and
Moakes soon joined their collaboration, and under the name
Union, the quartet issued a demo in early 2003; later that year, they switched their name to
Bloc Party.
The group's demo and concerts began to attract attention from both the press and their peers;
Okereke sent a copy of the demo to
Franz Ferdinand, who invited them to play at the Domino tenth anniversary bash in fall 2003. Early the following year, the band released one of the demo's tracks, "She's Hearing Voices," as a single on Trash Aesthetics. A few months later,
Banquet/Staying Fat arrived on Moshi Moshi. That spring,
Bloc Party signed to Wichita to release their full-length album in the U.K., and to Dim Mak for U.S. distribution. The band spent summer 2004 recording and touring. Late that summer,
Bloc Party, which collected the band's first two singles, arrived in the States. Their debut album,
Silent Alarm, appeared early in 2005 and was released by Vice Records in the States to widespread acclaim. Later that year,
Silent Alarm Remixed capitalized on the band's burgeoning popularity, as did the 2006 EP
Helicopter.
A Weekend in the City,
Bloc Party's second proper album, followed in 2007.
A Weekend in the City leaked onto the Internet months before the album's street date, which inspired
Bloc Party to issue their third album,
Intimacy, online in late summer 2008; the album was released on compact disc that fall. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide