Bloc Party
From Reading
About
Also known as: Block Party
Bloc Party have spent over two decades proving that guitar music and the dancefloor aren't mutually exclusive. Formed at the 1999 Reading Festival when Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack crossed paths again after meeting a year earlier, the London band quickly built a reputation for nervous energy, razor sharp guitar work and rhythms that simply refuse to sit still. Their 2005 debut Silent Alarm was a genuine landmark: NME named it Album of the Year, it went platinum in the UK, and Pitchfork called the band "rhythmically vital and melodically sharp." BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq, who was handed a demo by Okereke backstage at a Franz Ferdinand show, labelled the track "genius" and the rest followed fast. Second album A Weekend in the City hit number two on the UK Albums Chart, and third record Intimacy showed them pushing further into electronic territory. After lineup changes that saw founding members Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong depart, the band kept going with fifth album Hymns in 2016 and sixth album Alpha Games in 2022. Having sold over three million albums worldwide, they remain one of the defining acts of the post punk revival era.
