Kele Okereke announces new album "The Waves Pt. 1" and shares cover of Bronski Beat’s "Smalltown Boy"

Kele Okereke has today announced details of his forthcoming studio album, "The Waves Pt. 1" - which will be his sixth solo album. 

The new LP is set for release on May 28th via his own label, KOLA Records.

With the announcement of the new album, Kele has released a new song lifted from the record, a cover of Bronski Beat’s "Smalltown Boy"


On The Waves Pt. 1, Kele says

 “After the first lockdown I found myself in an odd position. We were due to start working on my second musical with the Lyric Theatre but when the lockdown came into effect those plans were thrown into disarray. I became a stay-at-home dad of a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old. Those initial days were hard but looking back they were also incredibly rewarding. In the rare moments of downtime, I would go up to my music room and play the guitar, looping myself, making this wall of sound. it became a type of therapy for me, something to calm me down as it seemed like the whole world was losing its head. I realised in those moments that I missed the act of performing, so I joined Instagram so I could upload performances of my old songs and songs that I love. It was a lifeline for me, to still feel connected to an audience, to still feel like a musician in this time of freefall.”

“What also became clear was that I still had the desire to create. Usually, when I make records it's an ensemble affair, there are usually lots of other musicians and singers I work with, but as we were in lockdown I did not have that luxury of being able to work with other musicians. I knew I had to fill in the space of this record entirely by myself, which was daunting but also very liberating. This album is literally the sound of me.”

“As I didn't have so much time in the days to work on the ideas I had to be very focused with the little time that I did have. During the night I would go for long walks around the city on my own, listening in the moonlight to what I had recorded in the day, rearranging the songs in my head, trimming the fat. It became very clear to me that I had the start of a new record and it was going to feel very different to what I had done before.”

“The initial plan was that the record was going to be solely instrumental, after 2042 I knew that I wanted a break from writing words. Although making that record had been rewarding it had also at times been quite traumatic for me, as I was forced to examine a lot of my own personal fears and anxieties about race relations in this country and the US. I made 2042 in 2019, so when those same discussions about race came into sharp focus after the death of George Floyd in 2020 I personally felt that I needed a break from the heaviness, I knew that whatever I did next musically would need to cleanse me.”

“Slowly I started adding words and vocal melodies to the ideas and I could see songs starting to take shape but it was important to me that the music felt fluid, that it drifted in out like the bobbing of waves, that if you let yourself succumb to it maybe it could take you somewhere else, somewhere far away from here.”