A Party With Bloc Party In Jakarta

8 years, that is pretty much how long we have been waiting to see Bloc Party having a show in Jakarta (20/03). We actually have caught some of them doing a DJ set before (Russel Lissack, Kele Okereke, and Matt Tong have done that in Jakarta). The rumour of them to break up had put us into a scare of never seeing them live. However when their work of the latest album “Four” spreaded out globally, it took us back to our dream, Seeing Bloc Party live in concert.

As the news of them being one of the headliners for Future Music Festival Asia came out on a surface. Some gossips of them coming to Jakarta started flowing on the online channels. And it’s Ismaya Live who get to break the 144.  The promoter seemed have been trying to get Bloc Party (where they successfully brought Kele to do a DJ set in 2010) to have a show in Jakarta. On that night, March 20th 2013, some of the avid fan of the band have come earlier (the gate was open at 6 PM) to earn the front row which will get them a better sight to the stage.

The Indonesia’s power pop indie band, the Adams, took back some memories of their fans who have missed the Adams’ classic tracks. “Konservatif”, “Hanya Kau”, and “Halo Beni” were performed nicely and could scrub more the nostalgic feeling of the fans.

People started tapping their feet when the clocked ticked at 10 PM and there was no sign from Bloc Party to show up. After the another couple of minutes, the lights were dimmed and turned to spot out one by one of the members who got to the stage. The first track from album “Four” was picked as the starter, “So He Begins To Lie”. Since this song is from their latest album, the sing along session was not heard much, but the cheer was explosive. For the next three songs, they played consecutively in order for the least to the earlier, “Trojan Horse”, “Hunting For Witches”, and “Positive Tension”. It was the eleventh song which ripped the crowd into a dancing mass. The single, “One More Chance”, definitely level-up the heat with its dancey intro. We could see the atmosphere shook out as Kele showed off his dancing skills. The more charging up song was up next, “Octopus”. Still performing from the new album’s tracks, “We Are Good People” got to be the last song for the first round.

The noisy sound from the stage went off, the crew ran back and forth to prepare for the encore. The silhouette of the band re-appeared from the left side of the stage. Matt Tong was definitely the one who got the fan-girl scream the most since he was shirtless and wore a short-denim pants. Prepared for the fourteenth song, Kele who wore a black tee with words “Support Your Local Artist” printed on it, said “Round two” and it invited the big loud scream from the crowd. But it was not a song which will invite people to another dance-floor. It was “Kreuzberg”, the song which Kele said as the real-eye opening moments and has a lot of memories of Berlin, soothed the crowd. The head-hammering song, “Arse”, really pumped the crowd. The crowd began questioning what song would be up next after Kele said “this song is for all of You who have waited for eight years” And the band charmingly performed “This Modern Love”, which is taken from their first album in 2005, “Silent Alarm”. For the song “Flux”, Kele asked all of the girls from the crowd to sing the intro of the song, as usual, it was Rihanna’s “We Found Love” and continued with an incredible riff of Flux.

The band left the stage again and did the typical move to invite “we want more” cheer from the crowd. We certainly knew that it would be the second encore. And the band, returned to stage. Performed three songs for the last session, “Sunday” and “Like Eating Glass”, the crowd was happily forced to do a karaoke session of the band’s classic tracks. For the last shot, “Helicopter” which was one of the tracks that rocketed the band’s career flamed up that night. The earth quake-like ambience was clearly felt when the song’s intro blasted out. And of course, the other thing to make it greater, two big square balloons were thrown out from the stage. Choosing “Helicopter” as the closer of the night was a climax thing. But we still felt that there was something left since the band didn’t perform great songs like “Mercury”, “So Here We Are” or “The Prayer”. In the other hand, one of the audience, Faisal (19), said differently about the set. He said that the band’s decision to replace “Ratchet” and “Truth” (in Singapore, these songs were performed for the second encore) to “Sunday” and “Like Eating Glass” was a brilliant move. But still, fan is a fan. No matter how the set was like, we still had fun. And we finally can cross Bloc Party from our “Bands That You Have To See Before You Die” list.