Good Weather For Airstrikes

This is seriously like the biggest post ever. Bloc Party is my favorite band of 2005. Their debut album, Silent Alarm is more or less my favorite album of 2005 (if Silent Alarm is number 1 then Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake… is number 1a) and in my opinion, one of the most enjoyable albums (and one of the most impressive debuts) of all time. So this post is dedicated solely to Bloc Party, and you will be able to download all of Silent Alarm, as well as some remixes/b-sides not publicly released, and finally all of the videos the band has released to date. Also, I’m pretty sure Bloc Party’s lead singer, Kele Okereke, is one of the coolest people of all time. While I highly recommend the vast majority of this album, “Helicopter” and “Banquet” stand out as two of my top five favorite singles of the past year.

Silent Alarm MP3s: (links expired)
1. “Like Eating Glass”
2. “Helicopter”
3. “Positive Tension”
4. “Banquet”
5. “Blue Light”
6. “She’s Hearing Voices”
7. “This Modern Love”
8. “Pioneers”
9. “Price of Gas”
10. “Little Thoughts”
11. “So Here We Are”
12. “Luno”
13. “Plans”
14. “Compliments”

Bloc Party also has numerous quality remixes available, including a relatively new remix of “Banquet” by Mike Skinner (more commonly known by his rap name, The Streets) which has apparently been getting a lot of airplay over on MTV2 in the UK. Two other standout remixes are of “Helicopter” by DJ Allen. The Breakneck Mix is, as the name implies, much more urgent and upbeat, while the Santa Monica Mix is much more relaxed, but both are equally fantastic. Also, “Bloc of Nails” is a mash-up involving Helicopter and “Hand That Feeds” the leadoff single from Nine Inch Nails’ newest album, With Teeth, and it is one of the most well-produced mash-ups I’ve heard.

Remixes:
“Helicopter” (DJ Allen Breakneck Mix) (via BlocParty.net)
“Helicopter” (DJ Allen Santa Monica Mix) (via BlocParty.net)
“Banquet” (Phones Disco Edit) (via BlocParty.net)
“Banquet” (Black Moustache Remix) (via BlocParty.net)
“Banquet” (Streets Remix) (via Mr. Red Penguin’s MP3 Heaven)
“Bloc of Nails” (Nine Inch Nails vs. Bloc Party) (via BlocParty.net)

I’m also hosting Bloc Party’s new single, “Two More Years”, available in the UK on October 4th as part of a double A-side single (the other half of which is the new song “Hero”, not yet available). Along with “Two More Years”, I’ve also posted “Tulips” the b-side from the “Little Thoughts” single (released last year) and “Pioneers” by the Mystery Jets, an awesome (though very different) cover available as a b-side on Bloc Party’s recent “The Pioneers” single.

B-Sides/Others:
“Two More Years” - Bloc Party [highly recommended]
“Tulips” - Bloc Party (via BlocParty.net)
“Pioneers” - Mystery Jets (Bloc Party cover) (via Mr. Red Penguin’s MP3 Heaven)

Finally, I’ve also linked to all of Bloc Party’s available videos. The best ones are the videos for “So Here We Are”, “Helicopter” (UK Version), and “Banquet” (2005 Version). For some reason the videos for “Helicopter” (US Release) and “The Pioneers” are basically the exact same video, only different edits. You can right click > save target as to download the Quicktime videos, while the WMV Format videos are only available for streaming.

Videos:
Quicktime Format (download: right click > save target as)
“So Here We Are”
“Tulips” (very high resolution, will take a while to download)
“Helicopter” (US Release)
“Two More Years”
“Banquet” (2005 Version)

WMV Format (stream only: click link to watch)
“Banquet” (EP Version)
“Little Thoughts”
“Helicopter” (UK Release)
“The Pioneers”

I’m exhausted. Enjoy.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 25th, 2005 at 5:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.