Kele Okereke Announces New Album 'The Flames pt. 2', Shares First Single Flames
Friday, 25 November 2022
Written by Jon Stickler
Photo: Flore Diamant
Kele Okereke has announced a new solo album.
'The Flames pt. 2' is set for release on March 24 via KOLA Records / !K7. Alongside the news, the Bloc Party frontman has unveiled the record's first single, Vandal, which offers a bass-led groove and distorted guitars, alongside glitchy electronic effects. It finds the 41-year-old focusing on what Britain appears to stand for. He said:
"As a British-born Nigerian, that debate has made me angry. It has felt like for these last few years I have been carrying around a lot of that anger, so with Vandal I felt I needed to put it somewhere useful.
"There haven't been many things that have made me feel proud to be British recently but watching those people in Bristol pulling down the Colston statue made me feel immensely proud. It was ordinary people saying 'no, this slaver does not represent my Britain'. It was an act of defiance that I understood and I suddenly got a glimpse of a Britain I could believe in."
The LP follows 2021's 'The Waves pt. 1', which was written and recorded during the COVID-19 lockdown. "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 added.
"Fire is powerful, it is both creation and destruction and I wanted that tension to somehow be reflected in the music,” he explained, "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," he continued. "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, meanwhile, put out their sixth album, 'Alpha Games', earlier in 2022. They'll tour the UK supporting Paramore in April.
'The Flames pt. 2' tracklist:
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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