Bloc Party Still Want To Dance, Just Differently

London's Bloc Party are ready to record the follow-up to 2005's Silent Alarm. The British band are also ready to change their sound and hope that the right producer will help them with the transition.

The foursome started writing new material during soundchecks while on tour last year. The boys brought the demos to their east London rehearsal space last month and have thus far narrowed their choices down to 20 tracks. The only sure thing about the new effort, according to bassist Gordon Moakes, is the desire to change their sound.

"There's always a danger that you can disappoint people when you do something different," he told RollingStone.com. "With us, we've retained some of that jerkiness [of Silent Alarm] but we didn't want to do anything that we've already done."

Songs set to be included on new album are: "Uniform," which Moakes claims will be a crowd pleaser; "Atonement," which will be the album's "centerpiece;" and "Wet," which will get people on the dance floor. Some tracks may involve strings, "processed beats" and hints of a TV On The Radio-inspired dream-rock sound.

The band are hoping to find a producer who shares their experimental nature. Chemical Brothers engineer Steve Dub and U2 remixer Jacknife Lee are in the running.

If he had to describe BP's current direction, Moakes says they're thinking along the lines of Radiohead. "[We're working toward] not being afraid to make music out of quite difficult sounds and have things quite processed. We want to get more texture into what we do, and not have it just like a rock record."

The only way to get a preview of the band's new sound is to check them out on their four-day U.S. jaunt in April, which includes a stop at the Coachella Festival on April 30. The new album is planned for an August release.