Bloc Party surprise with third album Intimacy

Still Party from the Bloc
Still Party from the Bloc

Bloc Party held a live webchat yesterday to announce a surprise release: their third album. It's called Intimacy and will be available digitally on Thursday 21 August. That's in three days… surprise!

The new album follows 2005's massively-acclaimed debut Silent Alarm and 2007's opinion-dividing A Weekend In The City. Intimacy's production comes courtesy of Paul Epworth and Jacknife Lee - knob-twiddlers on album one and two respectively.

The press release promises: "some songs are Bloc Party at their most wildly experimental, while other tracks are simply classic Bloc Party, fitting in seamlessly amongst fan-favourites Helicopter, Banquet and So Here We Are".

If the first single Mercury is anything to go by, it's going to be more A Weekend In The City than Silent Alarm. Here's the tracklisting to keep us guessing…

1. Ares
2. Mercury
3. Halo
4. Biko
5. Trojan Horse
6. Signs
7. One Month Off
8. Zephyrus
9. Better Than Heaven
10. Ion Square

Physical CD fans will have to wait until 27 October, but anyone pre-ordering will also receive the download on Thursday.

Tom Porter worked on MusicRadar from its mid-2007 launch date to 2011, covering a range of music and music making topics, across features, gear news, reviews, interviews and more. A regular NAMM-goer back in the day, Tom now resides permanently in Los Angeles, where he's doing rather well at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).