Amongst preparation for Bloc Party’s upcoming UK and US tours with Paramore, Kele (Kele Okereke) has today shared his anticipated new solo album The Flames pt. 2, available now via KOLA Records / !K7.
The record arrives alongside a new single titled ‘He Was Never The Same’, intended to sound like a nightmare crawling out of a dream. “It’s the sound of a debilitating neurosis, boring its way through you until there is nothing left,” Kele notes. “The song itself is about the idea of trauma and how if left unchecked, it can cast a shadow over one's whole life.”
Kele’s sixth solo album, The Flames pt. 2 arrives as a response to 2021’s The Waves pt. 1, an album Kele wrote and recorded during lockdown; a time at which he felt as though he was lost at sea. “I always knew that I would find a way out of that feeling, and I always knew I was going to make a response to The Waves”, he notes.
If The Waves pt.1 was about inertia and the feeling of life spinning out of control then The Flames pt. 2 is the unflinching of holding your hand to the fire and keeping it there, no matter how uncomfortable those feelings might be.
“Fire is powerful, it is both creation and destruction and I wanted that tension to somehow be reflected in the music,” tells Kele. “the sound of being consumed by our desires, of feelings burning so intensely that they literally burn out.
Like The Waves it was important that all the sounds of the record were made by my electric guitar. Writing and recording a record within these parameters has forced me to become more creative as a musician, from the looped ambient textures to the brittle drum machine rhythms. it's all made by my guitar and my loop pedals, and that's how it will be performed.”
Bloc Party will tour the UK in April 2023 to support Paramore on their first UK tour since 2018. The six date run will visit Dublin, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham in addition to a highly anticipated London show at The O2 Arena on Thursday 20th April. The two bands will then tour the US together in May and June.
The Flames pt. 2 - Track Listing
1. Never Have I Ever
2. Reckless
3. And He Never Was The Same Again
4. True Love Knows No Death
5. Vandal
6. Her Darkest Hour
7. No Risk No Reward
8. Someone To Make Me Laugh
9. I’m In Love With An Outline
10. Acting On A Hunch
11. Kerosene
12. The Colour Of Dying Flame
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