Kele Okereke Admits Hating Bloc Party's Debut Album

When Bloc Party's debut, 'Silent Alarm,' came out in 2005, the rock landscape was in a state of flux. The 'New Rock Revolution' -- as the NME dubbed the garage-rock revivalism of the Strokes and White Stripes -- was in its denouement while a new wave of groove-based guitar rockers were adding danceable beats to the mix. Bloc Party were leading the charge with the bombastic, busy drumming and spastic, angular guitars of 'Silent Alarm.'

Nearly six years later, the album's mastermind and Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke reveals that, while he can tolerate most of the group's less successful follow-ups, he hated the band's breakthrough album when it came out and hasn't listened to it much since.

"I don't listen to any of the old records," Okereke confides to Spinner. "I realized recently that I didn't own a copy of either 'Intimacy' or 'In the City,' so I went to my label and I asked them for copies of both. I don't own 'Silent Alarm,' either, but I was quite eager to see how the other two sounded since I hadn't heard them in a really long time."

"I was really impressed with how 'In the City' sounded," he explains. "With 'Intimacy,' there were some songs on there that I really liked and there's some songs I can't listen to. I haven't heard 'Silent Alarm' in ages but I remember really hating it when we were finished with it."

The culprit for Okereke seems to be the mixing of Matt Tong's drums, which the singer claims were way too loud.

"I think when we were mixing [the album] I wanted the songs to have some power and that's why the drums are so high in the mix. I wanted it to have more of a presence," he explains. "But I didn't like the drum sounds, they're mixed way too loud. That kind of ruined that album for me."

Now that he's older and wiser, Okereke claims that he used that production botch to drive his future recordings, including his recently released electronic-tinged solo debut, 'The Boxer'

"I remember not liking 'Silent Alarm's production, then struggling for the next couple of albums to make something more precise," he recalls. "If I knew then what I know now we would have achieved that power in a different way."