Interview with Kele Okereke of Bloc Party

With Kier Proudlove Kureishi

Interview with Kele Okereke of Bloc Party

With Kier Proudlove Kureishi

Extended audio version

Kele Okereke is best known as the front-man of Bloc Party, which broke onto the music scene in 2004 and released their first full album, Silent Alarm, in 2005. Since then Kele has carved out a unique space in the world of alternative music. His work has fused elements of rock, electronica, and dance music, establishing him as a versatile artist who isn’t afraid to change the direction and work with different sounds.

Kier

You were telling me that you've now been working on a memoir. How is that different to writing lyrics and how has that come about?

Kele

I'm about a third of the way through. It was an idea that's been floated to me a few times over the years but I've always kind of resisted. I didn't really think that I'd remember much about my past because I'm not someone that tends to look backwards. The early days are such a blur now and they seemed like a lifetime away. I guess also I just felt maybe I haven't done enough yet to write a memoir. I'm only 40. In the last two years, with a lot of personal changes in my life, it just seemed like the right thing to do, to stop and take stock and to force myself to look back at who I was and where I've come from. I'm really glad that that I am doing it now.

You ask how it's different to writing music and it's quite a solitary kind of practice. I'll take myself away usually first thing in the morning and a little bit at night, but usually first thing in the morning. It's easier to be creative. It's been a very enjoyable private discipline, kind of looking back at my life and trying to work out how I got here.

During the pandemic I spent a lot of time going back and listening to old recordings so I could rework things and that was the first time that I've really gone back and listened to my records. I think that process, being able to see my music as a body of work, gave me a different appreciation for what it is that I've done. Up until this point I wasn't really interested in looking backwards but I can see that it's been quite galvanising for me.

Kier

How has your attitude to music changed since you first started? Do you see it more as a job and a way of making a living now, or is it still the same?

Kele

Interesting. It definitely it feels like a job but I will preface that with the fact that it's a job that I love and I still love. I'm thankful that it's a job. I realise that I'm very lucky to be able to be paid to do something that is an expression of myself. My friends and the people around me don't have that. There are aspects of this job that are difficult for sure. Things that I've struggled with over the years but I get to wake up and pull an idea out of the ether and compose and construct it. That's what I spend my days doing for the most part. I still get a passion from it and I think that's the secret of life. You have to love what you're doing every day.

Kier

Do you always enjoy it or is it ever a struggle? Creative work can be quite difficult. It's very personal. Does it ever get you down?

Kele

No it doesn't get me down. Writing music doesn't get me down. There are aspects of this life that are hard. Certainly at the start of my career, I struggled with just having to exist in a public space and seeing your image in magazines and people having this idea of you that wasn't you. I realised very early on that was part of the deal. You get to have this great life because you're being put in front of people so you have to take the good and the bad. I've never been naive about that.

Kier

For many musicians their music and writing can be an outlet for them and a way of dealing with and understanding their life. Do you feel it does that for you?

Kele

It's so interesting you say this now because it's something I've been thinking about a lot for the last year. What is the function of this act of creation? Why am I doing this? In the past I think I had a different relationship to this kind of expression. There were aspects of my life in my songs and there’s things that I could recognise but for the most part it was hidden in abstraction. But with the thing that Bloc Party are working on right now, it's very much going to be about my experiences. There isn't going to be any kind of illusion to anything. I'm putting my personal life front and center for this album that we're working on and I’m slightly nervous because I've never really done that. But the reason I'm doing it is because I kind of needed to do it because I went through some things that were quite difficult and the one thing that has been constant in my life has been my ability and desire to create music. It’s the only place where I can funnel these feelings and thoughts so it's taking on a very different role this expression that I'm doing. It's become quite a lot more therapeutic.

I've made so many records over the years and looking back on them all, now I can see that they document specific times and periods in my life. So I guess I have an understanding that this is what I need to do to get through this time. I need to document it all.

Kier

You and Russell, the lead guitarist for Bloc Party, have been writing together for around 25 years. Did you click instantly when you first started making music together and how do you have you maintained that partnership for such a long time?

Kele

I was at six form college. Russell was playing in a covers band and I thought he was really good. I thought, I'm going to ask him if he wants to start writing music together. He had dropped out of school to become a musician. He was just signing on and living in his mum's house playing Super Nintendo and eating frozen pizza. He was in a place where he wanted something to happen and I knew he was talented so I was keen to explore that. Something I recognised in him very early on is that he has a very passionate love of his instrument, the guitar. When I met him, although he dropped out of school and was at home on the dole every day, he was listening to records and working things out on the guitar. He wasn't lazy. He had discipline. He just wasn't in the right space and that was confirmed when we started making music together. It's been inspirational over the years to be in a band with him and to watch him play.

When we started the band, although I knew Russell was a great guitar player, it's one thing being friendly with someone at a party, it's another thing going into business with them and being contractually obligated to each other and also spending all your time in a tour bus with someone. I think that has been something we've had to work on. I think we're in a place now, 25 plus years of doing this, that we understand that this is bigger than us or our egos. So we have to keep doing this stuff.

Kier

Moving on to your solo work, you're about to release a new album in January. I know with your past solo albums, you were still working with producers and other musicians, whereas these recent albums have been completely by yourself. How is that experience working fully on your own?

Kele

It's been really enjoyable. There wasn't a grand plan when I made the first record, ‘The Waves’, but I realised that I'd learned something different about myself as a songwriter and a musician, and I was keen to keep pushing myself to see what I could do solely by myself. When people come to the tour in February it's just going to be me and my loop pedals making all of this stuff happen. I'm still kind of nervous about it because it's going to be a lot of coordination work but I made something that I wouldn't possibly have dreamed of making before. It was just a happy accident. These four records are going to be the sound of me on my own and it's always been a fantasy of mine to do that, to be able to go off and do something entirely for myself, having being in a collaborative process for such a long time.

In a collaborative situation everything is negotiated somewhat and that's the beauty of it. Everyone needs to feel included and I get that but it's been really great to not have that experience and to just be quite willful and tyrannical about where I take an idea.

Kier

This new album is the third part of your four-part series of albums. How and why did you create the idea of them being linked together like that?

Kele

I’ve made a lot of records over the years and at the end of the recording process you always have to go and talk to people about what it is you were doing but you realise at the time you didn't really know what you were doing. You were just following an instinct or a feeling and it led you somewhere, then you kind of work backwards and then you can see the path. When I listen to ‘The Waves’ now it really sounds like I can hear the sound of a relationship falling apart.

Kier

You didn’t realise that when you were writing it?

Kele

Not really. That happens with songs. You might not know what a song is about until years later. Then you you hear the words and you see that this completely matches up to something in your own life.

I didn't really 100% understand what ‘The Waves’ was but I knew I needed to express what was going on in my life. There was a sense of feeling disconnected. With ‘The Flames’ there was really the sense that something in my life had to change and something did change. I knew that was going to be a violent kind of thing but it had to happen. I think with ‘The Singing Winds’, it's really about adjusting to that freefall. All the routines in my life that I'd come to rely on now just disappeared and I feel a little bit in freefall. But I have to be fluid and I have to be flexible so I think that's what this album feels like to me. It's about the sound of being flexible.

Kier

And what do you think we could see in part four? Are we going to see a happy ending?

Kele

The fourth one is going to be based roughly on the element of Earth so stability is something that I'm hoping starts to manifest in my life. When it’s done it will be this thing that I did, that was just me. Nobody will be able to take away from me.

Kier

The music industry has drastically changed since you first started out. How do you feel about that and do you think it's impacted the way that you and other artists create and release their music, especially with social media and streaming?

Kele

I think it has. I have to be honest. I don't really pay any attention to the streaming debate. I don't stream. All my music I get the physical copy. I like having CDs, records, I like having MP3's, I have an iPod. That's how I want my music. I want to feel that I own it. I don't want to feel that I'm connected to this thing that is suggesting what I should be listening to. I think that's the thing that I find most frightening about things like Spotify, is that there's an algorithm that is feeding you things. I feel like there is something to be said for going out and finding things or, if you hear something and you like it, ‘Shazaming’ it or writing the lyrics down so you can find out what it is. There is something about being suggested things that I'm supposed to like that just doesn't sit right with me. I know, as a musician, that I shouldn't probably be admitting this.

What I'm concerned about is do I get to express myself and make music and share it with people? And yeah, I can and I still do. I guess that's because I'm in a privileged position as a musician that's been doing it for a while. Maybe I'd feel differently about it if I was a young person. There's so much stuff that I probably don't know about and I don't feel like I want to know about. It's funny because when I was a young person and I'd hear old people saying that about culture and stuff, you'd think you dinosaur, but now I'm happy to be a dinosaur.

Kier

To be honest, I agree with you. The thing I don't like about streaming, and especially the way it recommends you stuff all the time, is that because it's so fast paced, you don't take a second to listen to the record. After ten seconds you say that's it, I'm done. Whereas back in the day you'd have a CD that you would sit there and listen to and appreciate.

Kele

I still make space in my life to just put records on and listen to them. Not just if I'm doing the housework or something but I think it's good to just make time to sit. Sometimes I won't watch TV, I'll just listen to records because there is something quite magical about the journey that that takes you on that I think is being lost in this age of streaming. I like to believe that I am telling a story with music. I want to keep believing in the transformative power of making records because, it's what I've dedicated my life towards.

Kier

Your music over the years has evolved in many ways. At times it’s seemed quite experimental and original in style. Is there a new direction you see yourself going in either with Bloc Party or by yourself?

Kele

It’s hard to have an overview like that at this part of the process. We're working on a record at the moment and it is definitely a new space for us. It feels exiting. Nobody wants to make the same thing that they've done, well, no one in this band wants to retread the ground that they've trodden. We all get a kick from that new feeling of when we can hear that there's a place that we've not been to. It's a real addictive feeling. It's starting to take shape. What we're working on right now I think is going to surprise people. But I think I've got to leave it as a surprise for sure.

Kier

So you don't go in there thinking this is the sound we want to evolve to. It just happens as a process when you're in there.

Kele

There's an element of taking references of the sort of things that you're listening to but the magic of being in a band is that I might have an idea about something and then Russell always will have a different perspec

tive. What they bring to it elevates it or takes it somewhere else and that's the magic synthesis of collaborating in a band. You're greater than the sum of your parts and it's something I truly appreciate. I'm very lucky that I get to make music with people whose musicality I respect and I'm blown away by.