EXCLUSIVE “New” Bloc Party Song!
16 September 2006 |UPDATE: Ezarchive is back up and running and the link is working again. Enjoy.

Finally. FINALLY. I’ve been searching for this song for fucking ever. Yeah, yeah, “The Marshals Are Dead” was a track on Bloc Party’s excellent self-titled debut EP back in 2004, but it was rumored that Paul Epworth had produced another version of the track that was a last minute cut from Silent Alarm. However, countless searches proved fruitless and I had just about given up hope, until my So Here We Are 7″ arrived in the mail from Rough Trade last month. I expected it to come backed on the b-side by “Positive Tension” (as was the case on the CD release), but no! There it was – “‘The Marshals Are Dead’, produced and mixed by Paul Epworth”. Needless to say I played the record more or less on repeat for the rest of the day, thrilled to find out just how much better the Epworth version of the track is than the original. Both the Silent Alarm versions of “Banquet” and “She’s Hearing Voices” trump their EP counterparts, but neither holds a candle to the vast improvement between the EP and re-produced versions of “Marshals”.
Making the original sound like nothing more than a shitty demo, Epworth’s re-produced hotness is the slick, polished Bloc Party we’ve all come to know and love. Matt’s drumming is as tight as ever, Russell’s guitar riffs are sharp and angular as usual, Kele’s “forever!” yelps sound fantastic, and Gordon even gets his own short verse, a first as far as I’m aware of. As I was converting this from vinyl to mp3 in UVa’s incredible sound lab, the rotund fifty year-old woman who was helping me out insisted on putting the volume on high as we recorded and got way too into it. When someone knocked on the door requesting that we turn down our “headbanger music” (actual words), she defended it saying, “Come on, we’re just rocking out a little”, and I just smiled uneasily and shifted from foot to foot. The awkward circumstances surrounding the way in which I attained the track aside, it’s an absolutely awesome update to a song that was already great, and the improvement is so great that we can basically view this as a new Bloc Party song. Seriously, I can’t tell you how excited I am about this; download below or you shall rue the day.
MP3: “The Marshals Are Dead” (7″ Version) - Bloc Party ((highly recommended))








