All band members of Bloc Party conceived "A Weekend in the City" during 2005 while on tour in support of their critically acclaimed debut album "Silent Alarm". Despite missing their home city of London, the quartet became increasingly disillusioned with the culture in the area each time they sporadically returned. Band member Gordon Moakes has noted, "The contrast we saw between being away on tour and being home ... we would see that London wasn't changing really and that the people we'd grown up with were part of that." Okereke wrote many songs in 2005 and early 2006 and used a concept he called "Urbanite Relaxation" to expand upon the themes of life and leisure in the metropolis. The band recorded around 30 soundchecks for the initial lyrics using a MiniDisc player. The rest of the tracks were written in April 2006 before they entered the studio recording process.