Shooting schedule

Musical style of Bloc party

Bloc Party's brand of spiky guitar rock draws on influences such as The Cure, Joy Division, Sonic Youth, Blur, and The Smiths. Okereke has also stated that Mogwai's album Mogwai Young Team changed his life by being his musical "year zero". Okereke also cites Suede as a major influence, he says Dog Man Star was the first record he fell in love with. Particular parallels were made between Bloc Party and Gang of Four upon their arrival on the music scene, yet the band were "mildly infuriated" at such references, claiming they had never "particularly liked" Gang of Four.

  To achieve their unique style, numerous delay and other effects pedals are implemented. During the recording of second album A Weekend in the City, the band suggested it would contain "some truly R'n'B styled beats, a song where [Tong] and [Moakes] play drums simultaneously [with] both eggshell-thin fragility and trouser-flapping hugeness", as opposed to their typical sound. The style has been compared to and inspired by such bands as Radiohead, U2, Depeche Mode, and Björk. Some of the most noticeable changes between debut Silent Alarm and A Weekend in the City are that the songs became more layered and less raw due to inclusion of string arrangements.


With the release of "Flux," Bloc Party's style became even more diverse with the inclusion of electronic music. "Mercury" saw Bloc Party distance themselves even further from the traditional guitar band set-up by experimenting with dark electronic sounds and a brass section.

Third album Intimacy also features synths, processed drum beats and loops, vocal manipulation, and choral arrangements.Even though the album is influenced by electronic music, the band still has not lost their feel for guitar music.

For example, in a recent interview, Okereke said that the band is starting to miss their more traditional sound, and confirmed that may be the way fourth album is headed.However, Tong contradicted this, stating: "There's every chance we might go back to more orthodox arrangements or things that resemble a traditional band but I don't think we'll ever write songs like we did on Silent Alarm again."

Previous Albums

Silent Alarm (2004–2006)

Bloc Party's debut album, Silent Alarm, was released in February 2005 and was met with universal critical acclaim. It was voted 'Album of the Year' for 2005 by NME, and reached number 3 on the UK Albums Chart before being certified platinum.The first single from the album, "So Here We Are/Positive Tension", made the top 5 on the UK Top 40 chart. Further singles "Banquet" (which reached number 13 in NME's 'Top 50 Singles of 2005'), "Helicopter", and "Pioneers", whilst failing to repeat this success, still managed to reach the UK top 20. 
The animated video for "Pioneers", made by the Shoreditch-based Minivegas design agency,was top of the NME video charts for 4 weeks.

The band received good reviews from critics in the United States and they toured there heavily in the 18 months that followed the release of Silent Alarm. In early 2006, they finished their tour with sold out shows in Los Angeles, Miami and Berkeley.
The album went on to sell more than 350,000 copies in North America and over a million worldwide. After this success, the established electronic group, The Chemical Brothers, soon collaborated with Okereke for "Believe", a track on their Push the Button album. An album of remixes of tracks from Silent Alarm had also been released at the end of August 2005 in the UK. This remix album, entitled Silent Alarm Remixed, retained the album's original track list and includes remixes from the likes of Ladytron, M83, Death from Above 1979, Four Tet, and Mogwai.
During July 2005, Bloc Party recorded two new tracks with Silent Alarm producer Paul Epworth.

The songs were released as single with a B-side, titled "Two More Years", to coincide with the band's October 2005 UK tour. The tour was also accompanied by a re-issue of Silent Alarm, which included "Two More Years" and former single "Little Thoughts" as bonus tracks. A remix of "Banquet" by The Streets, as well as a music video for the song, were included in the "Two More Years" single. Bloc Party also contributed the track "The Present" to the Help!: A Day in the Life compilation, the profits of which benefited the War Child charity

Band Biography

Bloc Party are an English indie rock band, composed of Kele Okereke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Russell Lissack (lead guitar), Gordon Moakes (bass guitar, synths, backing vocals, glockenspiel), and Matt Tong (drums, backing vocals). Their brand of music is said to have been drawn from such bands as The Cure, Joy Division, Sonic Youth, and in their more recent work, Radiohead.
The band was formed at the 1999 Reading Festival by Okereke and Lissack. They went through a variety of names before settling on Bloc Party in 2003. Moakes joined the band after answering an advert in NME magazine, while Tong was picked via an audition. Bloc Party got their break by giving BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq and Franz Ferdinand's lead singer, Alex Kapranos, a copy of their demo "She's Hearing Voices".
In February 2005, the band released their debut album Silent Alarm. It was critically acclaimed and was named 'Indie Album of the Year' at the 2006 PLUG Awards, which honour indie music. That year, the record was also certified platinum in the UK. The band built on this success in 2007 with the release of their second studio album, A Weekend in the City, which reached a peak of number two in the UK Albums Chart and number twelve in the Billboard 200. In August 2008, Bloc Party released their third studio record, Intimacy. The band are currently on hiatus as of 31 October 2009.

History

Formation and rising popularity (1999–2004)

Russell Lissack and Kele Okereke first met in 1998 in Essex. Lissack had attended Bancroft's School, while Okereke attended Ilford County High School, then Trinity Catholic High School, Woodford Green for sixth form. They bumped into each other again in 1999 at Reading Festival and decided to form a band. Bassist Gordon Moakes joined after answering an advert in NME, and drummer Matt Tong joined after an audition. After going through a variety of names, such as Union, Superheroes of BMX, The Angel Range, and Diet, the band settled on Bloc Party in September 2003, a play on block party. The band has said that the name was not intended to be an allusion to the Soviet Bloc or the Canadian political party Bloc Québécois. However, Moakes said on the group's official Internet forum that it was more a merging of the eastern "Blocs" and the western "parties", in the political sense. He also notes that the name was not explicitly driven by politics, but rather it "looked, sounded, seemed fine so we went with it."
In November 2003, Bloc Party had their track "The Marshals Are Dead" featured on a compilation CD called The New Cross released by Angular Recording Corporation.They then released their debut single "She's Hearing Voices" on the then fledgling record label Trash Aesthetics. The band got their break after Okereke went to a Franz Ferdinand concert in 2003, and gave a copy of "She's Hearing Voices" to both lead singer Alex Kapranos and BBC Radio 1 DJ Steve Lamacq. Lamacq subsequently played the song on his radio show, labelling the track "genius", and invited them to record a live session for the show. The buzz generated off the back of the single led to another release, "Banquet/Staying Fat", this time through Moshi Moshi Records, and to the eventual signing with independent label Wichita

Lyrics

I am sitting
On the roof of my house
With a shotgun
And a six pack of beer, six pack of beer, six pack of beer.

The newscaster says the enemy's among us
As bombs explode on the 30 bus,
Kill your middle class indecision,
Now is not the time for liberal thought,

So I go hunting for witches
I go hunting for witches
Heads are going to roll
I go hunting for...

90's, optimistic as a teen.
Now its terror
Airplanes crash into towers, into towers, crash into towers.

The Daily Mail says the enemy's among us,
Taking our women and taking our jobs,
All reasonable thought is being drowned out
By the non-stop baying, baying, baying for blood

So I go hunting for witches
I go hunting for witches
Heads are going to roll
I go hunting for...

I was an ordinary man with ordinary desire
I watched TV it informed me
I was an ordinary man with ordinary desire
There must be accountibility

Disparate and misinformed
Fear will keep us all in place
So I go hunting for witches
I go hunting for witches
Heads are going to roll
I go hunting for...

I was an ordinary man with ordinary desires
I watched TV and it formed me
I was an ordinary man with ordinary desires
There must be accountability

Disparate and misinformed
Fear will keep us all in place

Research and Development of Song

"Hunting for Witches" is a song by Bloc Party, and it is the third single of their second studio album A Weekend in the City. It was first performed live 2 May 2006 at the Brighton Concorde 2. The song was voted at number 24 on Australian radio station Triple j's Hottest 100 tracks in 2007.

Content

The lyrics in "Hunting for Witches" are influenced by the terrorist attacks on London's transportation system in July 2005. It also contains references to the September 11 attacks in the United States as well as the British newspaper The Daily Mail. Frontman Kele Okereke stated in an interview:

The 30 bus in Hackney, which is just around the corner from where I live, was blown up. [That song was] written when I was just observing the reactions of the mainstream press in [the UK] and I was just amazed at how easy it'd been to whip them up into a fury. ... I guess the point about the song for me is post-September 11th, the media has really traded on fear and the use of fear in controlling people.

The opening of the song features sound portions from news programs on TV and radio.

Video

The music video for the song is the most minimalist off the album so far. It simply features the band performing the song in a dark room, using some unique overhead shots in some parts of the video. The video is credited as being directed by Alan Smithee.

Initial Ideas

The initial ideas for the project was a movie trailer with a gangster thriller backdrop but due to constrictions made by the exam body like no original music and a 90 second limit eventually made me an my class mates  change our plans and decide to do a 'Bloc Party' video of the track 'Hunting for witches'.

At the begining of this project  i immediately decided to work with Adam Johnson and Michael Burrin because of thier technical expertise and the deep amount of enthusiasm they show for the subject.