Kele Okereke

★★★

The Waves Pt.1 KOLA. DL

Bloc Party frontman’s fifth solo album, a loopy lockdown missive.

Okereke’s last album 2042 was also selfmade, but enforced social isolation has triggered a fresh response, replacing former indie rock, dance and folk tropes with a bedrock of loops and no anchoring drums/beats. The

Waves Pt 1’s ebb-and-flow is closer to Philip Glass’s pulsing minimalism than anything calming or restorative; even the backdrop to spoken-word meditation Intention ignores its own advice. And when Okereke pens an instrumental ode to a beach scene, it’s the bleak shingle outpost of Dungeness. There are strong songs too, like They Didn’t See It Coming, striking notes of paranoia and anger, but an unexpected cover of Bronski Beat’s gay anthem Smalltown Boy is gentler. It’s a story of surviving against the odds, which might be how Okereke conceived The

Waves as a whole.

Greentea Peng: eats ’shrooms and parties hard.