Bloc Party – Intimacy: Out tomorrow!

Surprise! In an age where traditional rest/tour/promotion/release cycles are becoming ever more rapid, disjointed and in somes cases, non existent, It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that Bloc Party have taken little more than 18 months to release a new album. I mean 18 months is plain slothenly in comparison to Los Campesinos!. But still, at least they had the decency to announce their two a year habit a few months before hand, here Bloc Party have given us three days! (Which is made even shorten when certain, also slothenly, bloggers take two of those days to actually report it)

Anyway, it’s called Intimacy, the digital album is out tomorrow – with a physical copy available for the 27th of October – and two of the tracks are available for your listening pleasure already; The already infamous Mercury and the vaguely promising Trojan Horse, which has a sort of welcome return to the tremolo guitars and bouncing bass that Bloc Party made their fame on. Trojan Horse is linked and streamed below.

Exciting times!

Intimacy:

01 Ares
02 Mercury
03 Halo
04 Biko
05 Trojan Horse
06 Signs
07 One Month Off
08 Zephyrus
09 Better Than Heaven
10 Ion Square

Bloc Party – Intimacy is available for digital download on the 21st of August and a physical verision is available to pre-order for release on the 27th of October.

EDIT: Changed the download to 256kb file as a thanks for the hundreds of hits! And at the time of writing, No.5 on Hypemachine, cheers guys. (Shame this song is one of the few good tracks on the album eh?)

MP3: Bloc Party – Trojan Horse

RIP Isaac Hayes

Ok I’m nine days late, but to be honest, nine days ago this man wasn’t really relevant to me, musically at least. I was more than familiar with his voice-acting as Chef, Chocolate Salty Balls and his (unfortunate) membership in the church of Scientology. But as news started filtering through about his death I thought I’d investigate, two albums kept on coming up in tributes to him, the Shaft Soundtrack and Hot Buttered Soul.

I was already familiar with the Shaft theme tune, who isn’t? So I decided to check out Hot Buttered Soul and it is mindblowingly good, the cover of Burt Bacharach’s Walk on By is an invigorating reinterpretation of a pretty ubiquitous pop song. Hayes manages to transform and make the song it’s own with it’s soulful and gospel vibes, the only taint on the song is the criminal fading out of what sounds like a promising drum solo at the end which really could do with being streched out for another 2-3 minutes.

Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic is the other highlight is an extremely funky affair, with a groovy bass groove and a disgustingly good piano solo in the middle which rides beautifully on top of the relentless bass groove, it’s just one of those songs that you can never really pinpoint why it’s so good, there’s no single point that does it, it’s just in the groove, you know?

Then of course there’s The Shaft Theme, not on Hot Buttered Soul – which you should all buy immediately – but it’s futile trying to post about Isaac Hayes without mentioning it.

Unlike most big artists ‘most famous’ song, it isn’t an awfully watered down version of what the person does best. Infact it’s arguably his best work, the slow build up and layering in of those 16th note cymbals, the iconic wah-wah guitar, the flutes and then those horns – It’s perfect.

RIP

MP3: Isaac Hayes – Theme from Shaft