Music

Blur “Think” Up New Album

First recording in four years due in May

February 25, 2003

“It’s an album about love and politics,” says Damon Albarn of
Blur’s seventh album, Think Tank, recorded last year in
Morocco and England. The album, the band’s first since 1999’s
13, will be released May 6th.

One new track, “Brothers and Sisters,” “starts off like John Lee
Hooker and ends up like Grandmaster Flash,” Albarn says. Another,
“Out of Time,” features a Moroccan orchestra, and will be the
album’s first single, due in April.

Think Tank was produced by Blur and Ben Hillier, with
additional production added by Fatboy Slim (who produced two
tracks, including “Crazy Beats”) and William Orbit.

Two months into the sessions, founding guitarist Graham Coxon
quit the band, turning Blur into a three-piece and leaving Albarn
to pick up the guitar-playing slack. “There was nobody else to do
it, so I had to,” he says. “It was really difficult, but with that
massive change came a new vitality.”

Blur has also lined up their first London shows in three years.
The band will take up a four-night residence at the Astoria Theater
(May 8th through 10th and the 12th), with former Verve guitarist
Simon Tong sitting in for Coxon.