Matt Westcott talks to Bloc Party drummer, Matt Tong, as the band come back from years in the wilderness with their new album, Four

IT is fair to say there were those out there who wondered whether there would be such a thing as a new Bloc Party album. Their last release was back in 2008 and though Intimacy was critically-acclaimed, instead of choosing to build upon it, the band, for various reasons, decided to take a rest from music and each other.

It wasn’t until last winter the foursome of Kele Okereke, Russell Lissack, Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong got back together.

“We just took an extended break,”

explains Tong. “We were tired and the tank had run a little bit dry with regards to creative inspiration. We just wanted a little time apart. It was somewhat of an open-ended arrangement.

We hadn’t said one way or another whether we were going to stop or continue, but just kind of put that decision off for a little while.”

Tong says he was anxious to avoid the fate of other musicians he had come across, who just made music for the sake of it, rather than because they believed in it.

“On the festival circuit you are exposed to many other musicians and creative people and some of the older bands, who I looked up to when I was younger, musicians who were entering their 40s, a lot of them just seemed unhappy to me. It felt like a lot of them were doing it because they had been doing it too long and they had run out of time to pursue another kind of career or another interest,”

he says. “Personally, I was wary of that happening to me.”

The difference with Bloc Party was that all four knew they still enjoyed the process. But that is not to say that when they met up in New York there were not a few nerves.

“We were somewhat cagey as we arrived at the rehearsal room and began to set up our instruments and equipment,” he says. “We ran through a couple of our older songs to reacquaint ourselves with one another and it became immediately apparent that the chemistry was still there. It was fairly straightforward and from there on in to the point of finishing the record everything went very smoothly.”

With the niceties out of the way, the band set about recording Four – an album title which requires little explanation.

“Calling the record Four is a way of saying we are all back on board.

That album title existed before we had even written any music,” says Tong.

LISSACK’S fretwork was used as a starting point and the rest was constructed from there.

“We didn’t have a set framework of references. There were definitely a few bands that Kelli has been speaking about, the Deftones for instance, and Led Zeppelin, but really we started with a bunch of demos that our guitarist Russell had made on his own,” says Tong. “They were sketches, they were some ideas and riffs that he had recorded. We cherry- picked the best of those and they gradually became songs, and from that we began writing completely new material.

“We set out to make a record that wasn’t going to be augmented by production tricks. We wanted to make something that sounded like four musicians, as opposed to four musicians and a computer and a keyboard.”

Listening to Four, it is clear that it is a personal record, but is it one that only Bloc Party could have recorded?

“I think on this one we wear our influences very strongly on our sleeves. Would a band have made a record as diverse as this? I am not entirely sure,” says Tong. “A number of people have felt that it sounds somewhat disjointed, but it felt right for us. It seemed natural that all of those songs could all exist on the same record. Maybe other people wouldn’t think that way. To that end, then maybe only we could have made this record.”

Whatever the verdict, Tong is proud of what the band has achieved and believes the process has helped provide answers to some important questions.

“I think we are proud of this one because it came from a happier place. It came from a time of comparative unity between the four of us and that is something that we really worked on,” he says. “We were definitely trying to understand each other more as people, and as musicians, and I think we can be proud that we managed to get over some of our differences and to come back and make this record. I think it was important that we made this record.”

WITH that said, will Bloc Party stick around to share in any success or once again go back into the shadows?

“We will see. We are just at the start of a year’s worth of hard touring.

We are not getting any younger, so I am sure we will be having some sort of discussion at the end of that,”

says Tong. “But we all realise that we can stop for some time and carry on again and it’s not as harmful as we once feared it could have been.”

  • Bloc Party, Newcastle O2 Academy, October 12. Four is available now on Frenchkiss Records.