Damon Albarn says it’s time for Blur to “wrap up” again after a fleeting reunion.
The ‘Song 2′ hitmakers – also comprising Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree – reunited to release their first album since 2015, ‘The Ballad Of Darren’, and are close to completing their latest series of concerts in South America, and it appears it might be a while before fans hear from them again.
Speaking to French publication Les Inrockuptibles, as translated by Far Out Magazine, frontman Damon said: “It is time to wrap up this campaign.
“It’s too much for me. It was the right thing to do and an immense honour to play these songs again, spend time with these guys, make an album, blah-blah-blah.”
He added: “I’m not saying I won’t do it again, it was a beautiful success, but I’m not dwelling on the past.”
Damon has an opera coming out and he is preparing to start work on another album with his animated group Gorillaz with Jamie Hewlett.
Damon claiming he’s pressing pause on Blur comes days after Gorillaz bassist Seye Adelekan praised Damon for never wanting to stand still creatively.
The musician has toured with the ‘Cracker Island’ band since 2017 and says the 55-year-old singer’s “superpower” is always wanting to grow as an artist and work with the most exciting and diverse people.
Speaking on the ‘Meet At The Hotel Bar’ podcast, he said: “I think his superpower other than his amazing writing, which is great, he puts great people in a room together. He makes sure cool people are in the same room, everyone gets better by having this cool, diverse mixture of people in a room at the same time. I think that’s what he does best, he opens people up to new things because he is allergic to repeating himself.
“He cannot do it, physically it doesn’t work for him. We can play the same song 100 times every time we play it there’s something different about it. He’s also not worried if it goes wrong, we’ve re-started songs on big stages, like, just stop it, start again. If he makes a pure clanger he’s like, ‘Mate let’s re-do that.’ We’ve done it first song of a set before.
“There’s an openness to seeing what happens as well as a high level of professionalism and a high level of work that goes into it. Also, there’s an abandon and a let go of it.”