Kele Okereke has announced details of his debut solo album, The Boxer, which is due through Wichita on June 18.
‘It was just me and an engineer,” he says of the recording process. “I plugged in synths that I had no idea what they would do. I began programming drumbeats, which I had never done before. It was completely back to the drawing board. It was exciting and terrifying. In most cases I sat down, pulled a drumbeat out of nowhere and arranged stuff around that. This was as exciting to me as the first time I picked up a guitar.
“The key for the sound of the record was to take things as harsh and as physical as I could make it. The reason for going there was that these are the sounds that make me the happiest in the world.”
Tracks include ‘Walk Tall’, ‘On The Lam’, ‘The Other Side’, ‘Everything You Wanted’, ‘New Rules’, ‘Unholy Thoughts’, ‘Rise’, ‘All The Things I Could Never Say’, ‘Yesterday’s Gone’ and lead single ‘Tenderoni’.
The Bloc Party man will be previewing tracks shortly on www.myspace.com/iamkele.
As previously reported on hotpress.com, Kele plays Dolan’s, Limerick (May 14); Cyprus Avenue, Cork (15); Academy, Dublin (16); and Spring & Airbrake, Belfast (17).