After speculation last week that Bloc Party were recording new material without lead singer Kele Okereke comes a confirmation from the rest of the band that they are indeed searching for a replacement singer, at least for the time being.

In an interview with NME, guitarist Russell Lissack said “It’s not really a secret because Kele’s been pretty busy doing solo stuff and it looks like he’s going to be doing that a bit longer. The other three of us wanted to meet up and make music. We were talking about just doing an instrumental thing, but now we might get a singer as well, to properly put some music out and play some shows.”

Okereke spoke out to the media after he found out, simply through good timing that he spied his three bandmates enter a New York City studio to record without him. He took it as a strong im implication that he’d been sacked but tried to stay optimistic saying “I hope I haven’t been fired”.

Lissack continued “I haven’t spoken to Kele for a couple of months, I guess since the festivals when I was doing stuff with Ash. But there’s no bad vibes.” Okereke is continuing to prepare as planned for the release his solo EP ‘The Hunter’ and has just announced solo dates in the UK.

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