bloc party 'silent alarm' feb 14 2005.

"Like Eating Glass" is pretty amazing, I haven't been able to stop listening to it all week. Probably the best song on the album.

I've got a big crush on this band.

Wow, an NME-indie record in 2004 I'm not immediately predisposed to hate.

(That cover is rubbish though)

Posting images not working out..

ihttp://www.drownedinsound.com/images/6959.jpg

It's a nice record!

Is there and old version as well?

so franz ferdinand 2005 then....

Don't worry -- like the Rapture and Franz Ferdinand, I will grow to like them at the very moment ILM decides they suck.

London Tube gigs = Dud x infinity

Can I be the first to mention late 90s R*d**h**d on this thread, if they were divested of much of the moping and kept the shimmering textures and guitars that don't sound like guitars and serrated Jonny Greenwood solos and good drums.

My favourite bit in there is the raygun sound that appears midway through the guitar solo in Positive Tension.

I have seen them twice and while the new stuff kills live it just never connected with me the way SA did.

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Saturday, July 5, 2008 12:41 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Link

this is otm

-----

really

-- The Brainwasher, Friday, July 4, 2008 11:00 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Link

yes. i love this record very much

disappointed that this isn't a "hey guys...snakes on a plane!" revive

idk their last album debuted at #2 in the uk and just outside the top 10 here, so we should probably save that for hot hot heat or the vines or something

mercury is a real mess

ok cap'n save-a-horrible band

lol you like my brightest diamond

you shouldn't be using "you like horrible rock bands" as a zing in general

lol you like my brightest diamond

^ this is unforgivable btw

A "discbox" for a single??!! http://blocparty.sandbag.uk.com/Store/DII-69-2-disc+set+and+membership.html

I like how the 12" is "heavy weight" but the 7" is "heavyweight".

This seems insane. Especially when odds are that this is going to be sonically horrendous, thus pointless to own on anything bar MP3.

eh

they've already released two separate one-off singles (iirc) and maybe they realized that the only people actually paying real money for them were diehards who would go in on something like a "discbox" for a (most definitely sonically horrendous) single

i mean certainly there are bloc party fans out there who will pay 8 pounds for this + the opportunity to take place in nonsense like pre-ordering albums

Especially when odds are that this is going to be sonically horrendous

just checking nick : is this a reference to the fact that jacknife lee is still involved with the production, or a general sweep at the band ?

I don't know who's involved production wise, and obviously you can't really tell just off the website stream, but Mercury to me sounds like an almighty mush, and given past form I can't imagine this is going to sound like The Notwist or Shearwater in terms of levels and clarity once it's on CD.

One-off singles = Two More Years, Flux, and now this.

Little Thoughts too, yes? (although it was forcibly jammed on the US version of Silent Alarm)

Ah yes; didn't think of that one as it was prior to the debut album.

Then of course there's the debut EP, half of which got re-recorded and included on the debut album.

As a rule, I really like one-off singles.

I just listened to Flux (to contextualise, I'm listening to The Notwist a lot at the moment); it was fucking horrific. Made me feel ill. So I opened it in Audacity and had a look at the waveform. Solid blue bar approx 80% of the time. Urgh. I didn't get all the way through it, and it's given me a headache.

Sick you're as dull as Lex and Geir at this point.

I appreciate that.

Sorry that was an open goal, but surely you would at least appreciate some occasions where a complete barrage of compressed synthetic noise is actually what a song NEEDS? Especially a song like Flux.

I don't particularly like Flux but I can't for the life of me imagine wanting it to be more spacious or subtle.

If the wave form causes you pain, turn it off...

You can have compressed synthetic noise and it not sound like Flux, though - Young Gods spring to mind, the first track on the last Acoustic Ladyland album, Breathe by Prodigy, shitloads of other things. I don't want everything to be spacious and subtle, with things like Flux I just want... some actual build & release, some physical impact in the low-end. It's just a mush with no definition and no excitement.

Accident & Emergency by Patrick Wolf.

Yeah but the difference between Flux and the songs you mention is that the band are rubbish at doing build and release - any production job would struggle to overturn that.

The break at the end of So Here We Are disagrees with you, although not much else they've done disagrees.

I've talked in the past on ILE about reading something years ago about current directors growing up watching awful pan&scan videos of films and assuming that's how they were made initially, with all the random focus changes and camera movements and jerking and confusion, and that when these new guys go onto make their own films, that's what they do, so even the full shebang widescreen versions are crazily edited, jerky, confusing (especially action sequences), and I wonder if Bloc Party and Coldplay have grown up listening to Radio 1 and that's why their songs don't have any dynamic variance in them.

If something's going to be a constant barrage than I need, and I appreciate a lot of other people do not need, a degree of detail and texture to be involved with, to keep my attention, and Bloc Party haven't done that.

just heard the new single, awful.

I turned this off after hearing "my Mercury's in retrograde" for or five times and then the drums come in. Has anyone actually ever sat Kele down and said 'look, your lyrics are terrible, the harder you try the more embarrassing they are'.

They were just nonsensical enough to jive very very nicely with his wide-eyed delivery on the first album and become ignorable silliness that might JUST be profound if you were to pay attention when stoned. Everything past then has been awful.

Yeah the first album lyrics just sort of slip past you, everything since has pretty much shouted in your face 'PAY ATTENTION TO ME I AM PROFOUND!' and they are all the worse for it.

i agree in principle but still think that their bigger issue is in shit like totally harnessing matt and not being able to write a decent ballad. the lyrics have been pretty embarrassing but endearingly so imo, and i hate this position usually, but i'm okay with kele just going all out with his im profound tendencies as compared to most other brit rock. then again im a fanboy so i could see how it would be obnoxious. i still think they are sonically interesting ("interesting" at bad points like 'mercury') which at least always keeps me optimistic.

There was lots of "press" about the lyrics on the 2nd album being inspired by 'lots of nights on cocaine in Hoxton realizing how empty things are' or some such bullshit. And lots of pictures of him wearing a shirt reading "Eat Junk = Become Junk." Seriously, fuck the fuck off.

"Eat Junk - Become Junk" is a Six.By Seven song. The moment I realised his lyrics were shite was the bit about being bought foie gras and or whatever.

The exciting thing about the first album was how it sounded both like a band playing live and being REALLY EXCITING (those drums! that guitar!), and also like a deliberately dense studio record. They seem to have lost that first part since, and I don't think they or their producers are subtle or talented enough to do the latter part properly yet.

"Eat Junk - Become Junk" is a Six.By Seven song.

I didn't know that. But I'm sticking with 'fuck off' re: the sentiment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ad9M1_-pEs

Intimacy:

01 Ares
02 Mercury
03 Halo
04 Biko
05 Trojan Horse
06 Signs
07 One Month Off
08 Zephyrus
09 Better Than Heaven
10 Ion Square

^^don't have much faith, based on this tracklist

This is going to be even more pretentious than the last one isn't it? Except for One Month Off which will be the usual one moaning about how people have to go to work, and Better Than Heaven which will be the one that gets them on Radio 2.

This is going to be even more pretentious than the last one isn't it?

"it's being described as 'wildly experimental' in parts and 'simply classic Bloc Party' in others."

so yes

the other day i was defending their future by saying that mercury was just a one off single that they put out just because they can, but i guess i took the loss there

i'm probably their biggest backer on this board but im kind of dreading hearing this

Playing this for the first time in ages. Stands up amazingly well.

Yeah it's really good, back when Kele's lyrics didn't make any obvious sense.

Actually I'll play this now.

The three 'delicate' songs (Blue Light, This Modern Love, So Here We Are) are just absolutely beautiful.

Did you ever write about this record when it came out?

Yeah, I reviewed it for Stylus. On iPhone so can't link but google will find it easy peasy.

Actually there's a link up the thread.

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=2746

Thx guys