Blur at UK Number 1 for New Album

The Magic Whip, Blur's first album since 2003 has topped the UK Top Album chart in May 2015. It's currently at number 1 on the list. This is the group's first number one album in 12 years. 

They knocked out last week's chart topper Josh Groban's Stages, into fourth place.

The album chart saw little in the way of new entries aside from Blur, with Scottish twins The Proclaimers scoring the second highest new entry with Let's Hear it for the Dogs debuting at number 26. Taylor Swift's 1989 was at number two, followed by James Bay's Chaos and the Calm at three. 

Blur - Country House - Chipmunk Version

Time for some fun, fellow Blur fan! I decided its time to update my Youtube channel (www.youtube.com/user/uktahhh) and thank you ALL for the awesome 650+ subscribers. So I made a video, and I hope you enjoy it and isn't it just pure fun ?




I drew the logo myself.

Blur recording new songs again while Damon Albarn starts a new band

Breaking news: Damon albarn has been recording again with his old Brit-pop band Blur, with members including Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree. The news came just after Albarn, the frontman of bands including renowned electro-pop eclectic group Gorillaz, The Good The Bad and The Queen and most recently, a new band Rocketjuice and The Moon with Tony Allen and Flea, has revealed exclusively to NME magazine that "Blur had been meeting up regularly and recording again"! 


What exciting news - this means officially that Blur has NOT broken up, rekindled their grudges with each other, gotten past the massive hiatus of 8 years since 2003's album Out Of Time (minus Coxon) and officially started recording new songs again!

Will we see an album ? According to NME, Albarn revealed the britpop band has recorded a "spoken word piece with poet Michael Horovitz", a British Oxford-man, poet, songwriter/singer, translator, journalist amongst other things, who is famous for his provoking work for over five decades.

The track was put together in response to the brief threat that this year's Notting Hill Carnival would be cancelled. Albarn is ambiguous about whether the track will ever be released, commenting:

If they'd have cancelled the carnival – and thank God they didn't – maybe we'd have put it out. It had its moment: it was a perfect plea to reinstate the carnival. So it wasn't relevant – it was relevant for about 12 hours.

Albarn also said to NME he gets an "amazing feeling" from playing with Blur and hinted at plans to play live with the band, perhaps outside the United Kingdom sometime next year in 2012, due to his packed schedule. He also explains how he's trying to balance out Blur and his other projects which the work-a-holic is part of, such as his new band Rocketjuice To The Moon with the Red Hot Chili Peppers man Flea and Tony Allen.


Abarn also has two gigs with The Good, The Bad & The Queen later this month (both on November 10). He also released his DRC Music side-project album last month.


A truly great news for every Blur fan out there.


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Damon Albarn - Doctor Dee Opera 2011 UPDATE

Doctor Dee Opera

Damon Albarn's new opera Doctor Dee has received some press from a double page spread in the 28th May GUARDIAN newspaper, on the guide to Manchester International Festival. 

Quoted from the article, Damon Albarn's new show is a 'modern English opera' directed by Rufus Norris, about Elizabethan thinker and magician John Dee. In Doctor Dee, Damon Albarn will appear as himself, rather than in character, performing with legendary afrobeat drummer (and bandmate in The Good, The Bad and The Queen) Tony Allen. The BBC Philharmonic will be in the pit. There will also be Elizabethan instruments and some ritualistic elements, will be primal, about the life, ambition and belief of John Dee.

Read the whole article by clicking below, thanks damon4president and 2J for the scans.

Damon Albarn turns 43 ...and he's still as creative as ever

Before the clock strikes midnight, I would like to dedicate this post wishing Damon Albarn, of Blur and Gorillaz, a happy 43rd birthday! 


Now what's BlurBalls without crazy memes and pictures and captions?

And how can I put up pictures of Damon without adding something like this:

Good night readers! What do you want to give Damon for his birthday? Think he even celebrated at all or did he go out drinking all night ?

Food for thought.

Song Review: Snoop Dogg feat. Gorillaz - Sumthin Like This Night

RATING: 

So the song "Sumthin Like This Night" from Snoop Dogg's latest album Doggumentary is out on youtube.

The song features Snoop Dogg's signature drowning rap and clever lyrics, then Damon Albarn does the vocals, or the first part of the chorus "but you never tried it... something like this night...somethin like this night....". The second part of the chorus doesn't sound like Damon, it sounds like someone else, but we can still hear the Damon Albarn backing vocals all through out.

Listen below and keep reading on for a bit more reviewing.



The tune is much like Doncamatic (All played out), Gorillaz's non-album single released a few months ago. That was because Damon felt Plastic Beach didn't have a single that was "pop" and synthetic enough, so he created the song for the sole purpose of it being a non-album single that can sell. Anyways, in Doncamatic (listen below) there is an electronic trumpet instrument that blares the sounds all through the song. The rhythm is basically constructed of the electronic trumpet item blaring the tune of the song. In Sumthin Like This Night, similar sounds were used, and I think it worked better in Doncamatic to be honest.



I would say this isn't good single material. It's catchy but rather repetitive, and definitely not dance floor material (usually those get to top the charts, admit it) and the song's rather mellow and down key. I do hope it will chart if it gets released as a single from Snoop Dogg's album, though I somehow have doubts about that.

I just wish Gorillaz would make a more single worthy song like 19/2000 or Clint Eastwood soon! And release their b-sides.

Damon Albarn's new opera 2011 - Doctor Dee

Damon Albarn has written and will star in a stage show about 16th Century alchemist, astrologer and spy John Dee.

A musical work based on Elizabeth I's medical and scientific adviser, Doctor Dee will have its premiere in July at the Manchester International Festival.

It will then be staged at the home of the English National Opera as part of London's Cultural Olympiad programme.

The Manchester festival will also feature the debut of Bjork's new show during a three-week residency.

Other original productions will be created for the event by immersive theatre company Punchdrunk, film-makers The Quay Brothers, comedian Victoria Wood and performance artist Marina Abramovic.

Manchester International Festival director Alex Poots said the event, which started in 2007 and takes place every two years, was "a home for major artists to realise their most ambitious projects".

Albarn's Chinese opera Monkey: Journey To The West was a highlight of the first Manchester International Festival four years ago and the Blur and Gorillaz singer will present his next production at the city's Palace Theatre.

Albarn did not appear in Monkey but will perform in Doctor Dee.

The show has been co-produced by the English National Opera and the London 2012 Festival and will be staged at the London Coliseum next year.

It will be directed by Rufus Norris, who staged Don Giovanni at the ENO last year and whose Broadway revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses was nominated for five Tony Awards in 2008.

"It will be a big, spectacular show," Mr Poots said. "I know that Damon's passionate about it and he's already written some incredibly beautiful songs, some anthemic songs."

Bjork will launch the Manchester International Festival on 30 June with a show based on her new album Biophilia.

The project combines her interests in music, science and nature and is billed as a "multi-media project encompassing music, apps, internet, installations and live shows".

There will be an app for each song and the singer has invented a range of new instruments for the shows, including a 30-foot (nine-metre) pendulum that harnesses the earth's gravitational pull to create musical patterns.

She will perform six times over three weeks at the Campfield Market Hall.

Punchdrunk will return after creating the acclaimed theatrical experience It Felt Like A Kiss with Damon Albarn at the last festival. Their new show, The Crash of the Elysium, will be the company's first for children.

Elsewhere, the Quay Brothers, celebrated for their dark, disjointed films and animations, will team up with Russian-born violinist Alina Ibragimova to stage chamber music in a promenade setting.

Amadou & Mariam will play a show in total darkness

Amadou and Mariam, a blind musical duo from Mali, will attempt to stage the world's first concert in total darkness, while comedian Johnny Vegas will present a new theatre show.

Victoria Wood is writing and directing That Day We Sang, about the 1920s Manchester Children's Choir, which will open at the Manchester Opera House.

'Artistic powerhouse'

Hollywood actor Willem Dafoe is to star in The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic alongside the Serbian-born performance artist. The production will feature music written and performed by Antony Hegarty from the Mercury-prize winning Antony and The Johnsons.

The festival will also involve rapper Snoop Dogg, singer Sinead O'Connor, artist John Gerrard, the Halle Orchestra and French composer Mark Andre.

Manchester City Council's executive member for culture and leisure, Councillor Mike Amesbury, said the festival "makes a massive contribution to the cultural offering of our great city and has helped establish us on the world stage as a leading artistic powerhouse".

BlurBalls Caption Contest 4

TUESDAY NIGHT, people, time for another weekly BLURBLOG CAPTION CONTEST! Apologies for the erratic times, tough times call for a bit more flexibility on the postings. I've been up to drawing more pictures of Blur, going to the gym a few times per week, and generally doing what I do best - procrastinate. This week I present to you:

Come on guys! This one is A PIECE OF CAKE (or should I say bananas) ! Damon, Graham, two bananas, matching outfits, black shirts, damon's expression. You got a caption/ comment? Leave it below. 

The awesome winner for Blurball Caption Contest 3 is my amazing reader Rose  who didn't technically submit a caption, but committed Blur blasphemy by uttering Franz Ferdinand in a Blur website (gasp, horror!) with her comment mentioning how the line "Do you want to ? " was stuck in her head.

Really appreciate the long flowing comments, Rose. Keep posting. You get this awesome GIF as a prezzie. 

Thanks Rose. You can keep Damon! 

And for all you who are new or just stumbled upon this cozy little Blur blog across cyberspace, please leave a comment below!

Blur - 100 gigs you should have been at (NME)

This week NME features reviews of a 100 famous gigs. 

NME this week featured the top 100 gigs you should have been at. Seems pretty random to me, but Blur appear twice: with Suede at #63 at Town&Country Club, London, July 23, 1992 - and at #12 with, of course, Hyde Park, London, July 2-3, 2009.

Pic of the day - beautiful drawing of the boys

SUEDE/BLUR - TOWN & COUNTRY CLUB, LONDON, July 23, 1992

"We're so fucking shit you might as well go home now. This could be the worst gig you've ever seen." So said Damon Albarn as a ridiculously pissed Blur - having spent the afternoon drinking in Camden - took the stage for the charity Gimme Shelter gig in their 'Modern Life is Rubbish' phase.
They proceeded to deliver either the best or worst (depending who you ask) set ot their career, barely able to see their own instruments, falling over and trying to shoulder a speaker stack off the stage. It was as punk as Britpop would ever get, but in its aftermath, Food Records gave them a month to clean up or they'd be dropped. And out of the wreckage, immaculate rising supposrt act Suede, shimmied gloriously into the big time, having utterly outstaged the headliners. The first Battle of Britpop was on...

Town and Country Club - 1992

BLUR - HYDE PARK, LONDON, July 2-3, 2009

They may not have been the final shows of their ecstatically received 2009 reunion tour, but Blur's two night at Hyde Park were arguably their pinnacle as a live band, and if they're on/off studio potterings never come to a new album, it's how they should be remembered: with Damon rolling around the stage in wild, punk-rock paroxysms, an esqusitely chosen, cereer-spanning setlist, and Alex James with one foot on the monitor and a cigarette drooping from his lips, as though the noughties, cheesemaking and the TV talent show judging had never happened. It was pure nostalgia, obviously, but after six years away, that hardly mattered. A timely reminder that not everything about Britpop was bollocks.

Blur finished Hyde Park on a high note

Wonder who is No. 1 ? And I've decided to postpone the "Caption Contest" postings till later this week, so stay tuned for more blurry news, fun and caption contest excitement.