Live Review: WATCH: Bloc Party 'Kettling' (Official Video)

Kettling (v): A tactic used by police to impinge the movement of protestors. BLOC PARTY has released a video for ‘Kettling,’ a song off their 2012 album ‘Four.’

With their new sound that takes an angular point comes a video that politically comments on modern Britain. Living through a globalisation of excessive riots on television screens, the video plays out the disturbing truth through a group of kids in a British schoolyard who get into a violent brawl during a traditional game of ‘British Bulldog.’

This is what front man KELE OKEREKE has to say about the immense physicality (and the violence of tiny little fists):

“There was so much going on in the world in 2011 you couldn’t turn on the television without seeing pictures of people protesting or rioting or mass disarray. Of course those are quite frightening images. But there’s also something quite poetic about people standing up and saying they’ve had enough of something; that no, they will not take this any more. That’s what the song was really about.”

I found it quite a bland video to watch, but I have to admit that BLOC PARTY’s onto something by making music in the name of social commentary. Watching it a second time over, I noticed the album’s cover art discreetly drawn on the pavements at 0:47 – I wanna know what that’s about.

Words by Sandy Warhol

LISTEN TO MORE NEW MUSIC HERE