How Bloc Party Wrote 'A Weekend In The City' | Full Documentary

Описание: 00:00 - Context: Silent Alarm, cerebral ambitions
01:37 - Recording: Jacknife Lee, urban alienation, multicultural tensions in the UK, drug use,
08:30 - How drugs, Busta Rhymes and an obscure Polish composer inspired The Prayer
15:21 - Legacy: An album for a modern Britain, the album's lasting influence

In 2005, Bloc Party released their stunning debut album Silent Alarm. It turned the heads of critics, sold in massive numbers and earned the band their first Mercury Prize nomination. Fans waited on the edge of their seats for the follow-up.

Two years later, the band released A Weekend In The City, a blistering polemical album about the state of modern Britain (or at least Britain as it was in the mid-noughties). Led by the single The Prayer, the album explored themes like urban alienation, casual drug use and tentative gay romance. On Hunting For Witches, the band took aim at simmering tensions lying underneath the UK's multicultural, pluralist society.

Whereas Silent Alarm was characterised by its abstract, enigmatic lyrics and subtext, singer Kele Okereke opted for a more direct approach on A Weekend In The City. His lyrics on this album are marked by their nakedness - words that can be understood in one listen, and yet feel ripe to be pored over time and time again.

Perhaps this is the London quartet at their finest - angry, embittered, unmistakably metropolitan. And perhaps now, almost two decades on, the themes and issues that the band talked about on A Weekend In The City feel as relevant now as ever.

Let's dive into this record together - how Kele was inspired to write The Prayer by listening to avant-garde orchestral music and Busta Rhymes, how Brian Eno inspired the final song on the album, and choice cuts from the record.

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Note: None of the footage in this video is mine, and I do not own the rights, nor to the songs. Any copyright infringement is not intended, and this video should be considered as falling under 'fair use' classification.