Memory Recall: The link between Bloc Party and Philip K. Dick
Several Bloc Party songs feature literary and philosophical references, including the works of René Descartes and even Bret Easton Ellis. Singer Kele Okereke studied English literature briefly at King’s College, London, so he has always had a penchant for diving into the greatest writings of the past to inform his lyrics.
During a 2012 interview with Interview Magazine, journalist John Taylor drew attention to the fact that the Bloc Party song ‘V.A.L.I.S.’ from the album Four was written in reference to Philip K. Dick’s novel of the same name. It’s unsurprising to find yet another literary reference amongst Okereke’s works.
Discussing the song, Okereke said: “I had started writing a song about a conversation I was having with a future version of myself—it was originally called ‘The Other Me’, and then I started to read VALIS after having read The Man in the High Castle. I loved VALIS immediately”.
Okereke particularly enjoyed “the unreliable nature of the narrative” within Dick’s book. He added: “When the main character got a message from himself, from the future, the whole thing suddenly struck me as being incredibly resonant. So, I thought I should really try and pay some sort of homage to the book. Philip K. Dick was a visionary, prophetic writer”.
Dick’s novel’s title VALIS is an acronym for ‘Vast Active Living Intelligence System’, which is Dick’s personal vision of God. The novel is set in 1970s California and was one of the first of Dick’s works that were inspired by the religious experiences he had over the past ten years. Okereke’s lyrics feature the line: “He’s not the real me, but I can hear him from my future”. In VALIS, Dick explores the notion that humans are able to recollect intrinsic knowledge and memories using the titular “computer-like thinking system”, explaining how the novel inspired the Bloc Party song.
In his Exegesis, Dick further explained the concept. He wrote: “We appear to be memory coils (DNA carriers capable of experience) in a computer-like thinking system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experiential information, and each of us possesses somewhat different deposits from all the other life forms, there is a malfunction – a failure – of memory retrieval”.
As to another literary reference, the Bloc Party song ‘Disappear Here (Song for Clay)’ draws heavily from Bret Easton Ellis’ debut novel, Less Than Zero. The ‘Clay’ in the song’s subtitle refers to Ellis’ protagonist and narrator, and the song itself is strikingly similar to the themes of the novel in that it explores the ennui and disaffection of youth.
