Blur

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Blur
Blur-logo.svg

Blur July 2013
Blur July 2013
General information
Genre (s) Alternative rock , britpop , indie rock
founding 1989, 2008
resolution 2004
Website http://www.blur.co.uk/
Current occupation
Damon Albarn
Graham Coxon
Dave Rowntree
Alex James
Other members
Lead guitar
Simon Tong (tour replacement since 2003)

Blur [ blɜɹ ] is a British rock band that was one of the most important exponents of the 1990s Britpops . The band underwent several musical stylistic changes during the 1990s. While her debut album was still under the influence of the Shoegaze and Madchester movements, after three more albums influenced by British pop, she moved to indie rock and, with her last three albums before the band break, penetrated the border area between rock, electronic and experimental Music before. In 2015, the band continued this development with another album.

Band history

Originally the band was called Seymour; the name was changed to Blur in 1990 at the request of her new label Food Records . Her greatest successes to date have been the singles There's No Other Way (1991), Girls and Boys (1994), Country House (1995), Beetlebum, Song 2 (1997) and Coffee & TV (1999) as well as the albums Parklife, Blur and 13 .

While the debut, released in 1991, was still strongly oriented towards the then fashionable Manchester Rave , the second album Modern Life is Rubbish (1993) marked a musical reorientation that was successfully continued with the third album Parklife in 1994: its explicit reference to the British pop music tradition ( The Kinks , The Beatles ) and their clearly formulated rejection of the American rock music ( grunge ) that was predominant in the early 1990s ensured that the music press proclaimed Blur the creator of modern Britpop . The media hype reached its peak in connection with the release of the fourth album in 1995, when the "bourgeois" musicians of Blur were stylized by British newspapers as antagonists of the "working class" band Oasis .

But with their fifth and sixth studio albums, the group hit a completely new path since 1997. The brass arrangements were dispensed with, the rock elements were pushed and finally the producer changed. Instead of longtime companion Stephen Street , William Orbit, originally from the field of electronic music, was now at the mixer, who had already contributed a remix of Movin 'On to Blur's double EP Bustin' & Dronin ' . With Song 2 , which was also successful in the USA , the musicians now achieved their international breakthrough, after their success had previously been mainly limited to Great Britain and some European countries. The 1999 album 13 was a little less commercially successful, but was received very positively by the critics and contained at least one smaller hit with the song Coffee & TV .

Lead guitarist Graham Coxon left the group during the recordings for Think Tank in 2002 due to artistic differences. His participation in the album is therefore limited to the last track (Battery in Your Leg).

Damon Albarn made it clear early on that he would like Coxon to return to the band and that he would not work with Blur until then. In January 2007, bassist Alex James announced that the chances for a reunion were relatively good, even if no commitments had yet been made. At the end of 2008, the band announced two reunion concerts with Graham Coxon in London's Hyde Park . The performances took place on July 2nd and 3rd, 2009. On June 28, 2009, Blur performed with the original line-up at the Glastonbury Festival .

In 2010 the documentary No Distance Left to Run was released in cinemas . In April of the same year a new vinyl single was released, entitled Fool's Day , which could be downloaded for free from the band's homepage a few days later. After that, Damon Albarn said that he definitely wanted to work on more recordings with Blur in the medium term. In fact, a recording session with the British poet Michael Horovitz has taken place since then , but it has remained unpublished to date. 2012 had producer William Orbit hinted on Twitter to work with the band on new material, a little later surprised Albarn and Coxon at a charity concert with the acoustic version of the new blur-piece Under the Westway, and the end of February 2012 were Blur at the BRIT Awards on . However, the band was dissatisfied with the tracks recorded with Orbit. In February 2014, Albarn announced that there was new material for Blur, but that due to the many side projects of the band members, an indefinite amount of time would pass before it could be completed and released, so that a new album was not to be expected for the time being.

On February 19, 2015, the band surprisingly announced the new album The Magic Whip for April 24, 2015 and released several singles in advance. The recording sessions took place at Avon Studios in Hong Kong in 2014 when the band paused during an Asian tour; Stephen Street was the producer. Some concerts, such as B. in Hyde Park , followed. The album, which was largely praised by the critics, reached the top 5 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; in the UK it made it to the top of the sales charts.

Other Projects

Singer Damon Albarn is also the head of Gorillaz , who have so far released five globally successful studio albums: Gorillaz (2001), Demon Days (2005) and Plastic Beach (2010), and after a seven-year break, Humanz (2017) and The Now Now (2018) ). Another project is the trans-African cooperation Mali Music , which led to a record production in 2002 and which also employed Albarn in the period that followed. In January 2007 he released an album together with drummer Tony Allen , Paul Simonon (formerly bassist with The Clash ) and former The Verve guitarist Simon Tong under the name The Good, the Bad & the Queen . On June 28, 2007, his first opera Monkey: Journey to the West premiered at the Manchester International Festival . Damon Albarn's second opera Dr Dee. An English Opera was directed by Rufus Norris and premiered on July 1, 2011 at the Palace Theater , also as part of the Manchester International Festival .

Graham Coxon has been releasing solo albums on his indie label Transcopic since 1998 (distributed via Parlophone / EMI since 2002). The eight albums released so far are: The Sky Is Too High (1998), The Golden D (2000), Crow Sit on Blood Tree (2001), The Kiss of Morning (2002), Happiness in Magazines (2004), Love Travels at Illegal Speeds (2006), The Spinning Top (2009) and A + E (2012). Furthermore, Coxon has been an irregular part of Pete Doherty's solo appearances since 2009 and accompanies him on guitar.

Alex James was involved in the short-lived groups Me Me Me and Fat Les . Me Me Me, which consisted of James, The Lilac Time singer Stephen Duffy , Justin Welch ( Elastica ) and Charlie Bloor, released a UK top 20 single (Hanging Around) in 1996 . Fat Les, in turn, was a project involving James, controversial artist Damien Hirst - an old fellow student of the Blur band members - and actor Keith Allen . Her single Vindaloo reached number 2 in the UK charts in 1998. James' latest project is called WigWam .

Dave Rowntree has been a member of The Ailerons since 2006 and owns the computer graphics company Nanomation . For several years he has been involved in local London politics for the Labor Party . In the local elections in May 2007 he ran in his home district of Westminster for Labor and took third place behind the candidates of the Conservative Tories and the Liberal Democrats in the traditionally conservative constituency of Marylebone High Street .

Discography

Studio albums

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)
Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK US US
1991 Leisure - - - UK7th
gold
gold

(22 weeks)UK
-
First published: August 26, 1991
1993 Modern Life Is Rubbish - - - UK15th
gold
gold

(19 weeks)UK
-
First published: May 10, 1993
1994 Parklife - - - UK1
Quadruple platinum
× 4
Quadruple platinum

(119 weeks)UK
-
First published: April 25, 1994
1995 The Great Escape DE35 (19 weeks)
DE
AT21 (22 weeks)
AT
CH26 (7 weeks)
CH
UK1
Triple platinum
× 3
Triple platinum

(56 weeks)UK
US150 (1 week)
US
First published: September 11, 1995
1997 Blur DE23 (15 weeks)
DE
AT21 (10 weeks)
AT
CH17 (10 weeks)
CH
UK1
platinum
platinum

(75 weeks)UK
US61
gold
gold

(37 weeks)US
First published: February 10, 1997
1999 13 DE6 (9 weeks)
DE
AT12 (8 weeks)
AT
CH12 (6 weeks)
CH
UK1
platinum
platinum

(34 weeks)UK
US80 (5 weeks)
US
First published: March 15, 1999
2003 Think tank DE8 (8 weeks)
DE
AT19 (8 weeks)
AT
CH9 (7 weeks)
CH
UK1
gold
gold

(14 weeks)UK
US56 (3 weeks)
US
First published: May 5, 2003
2015 The Magic Whip DE3 (5 weeks)
DE
AT2 (5 weeks)
AT
CH4 (7 weeks)
CH
UK1
gold
gold

(13 weeks)UK
US24 (2 weeks)
US
First published: April 24, 2015

literature

  • Paul Lester: Blur. the illustrated story. A Melody Maker Book. Pyramid, 1995, ISBN 0-600-58689-8 .
  • Linda Holorny: Blur. an illustrated biography. Omnibus Press, 1996, ISBN 0-7119-5503-4 .
  • Martin Roach: Blur: The Whole Story. Omnibus Press, 1996, ISBN 0-7119-5701-0 .
  • Stuart Maconie: Blur: 3862 Days. The Official History. Virgin, London 1999, ISBN 0-7535-0287-9 .
  • Stuart Maconie: Blur - 3862 days. The official chronicle. Translated by Kirsten Borchardt, Hannibal, 2000, ISBN 3-85445-176-8 .
  • Alex James: Bit of a Blur. The official Autobiography of Alex James. 2007, ISBN 978-0-316-02758-8 .
  • David Nolan, Martin Roach: Damon Albarn: Blur, the Gorillaz and other fables. Independent Music Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-9552822-8-7 .
  • RM Clavier: Damon Albarn Unheard: The Story (Memorabilia Travel). Melodic Productions, 2007, ISBN 978-0-9556675-0-3 .

Web links

Commons : Blur  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Blur reunion gets closer. Is Graham Coxon finally ready to return to the fold? In: New Musical Express , January 7, 2007.
  2. Blur will play a live show in Hyde Park in Summer 2009 ( Memento from December 10, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  3. Blur add 2nd show
  4. Damon Albarn: 'I'm definitely up for more recordings with Blur'
  5. Damon Albarn: 'Blur have been meeting up regularly and recording again'
  6. Blur record 'a couple of tracks' with William Orbit
  7. Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon unveil new Blur song 'Under The Westway'
  8. Damon Albarn: Not a new Blur album
  9. New Blur album The Magic Whip is out in April. (No longer available online.) Festivalmoment.de, archived from the original on February 19, 2015 ; Retrieved February 19, 2015 .
  10. Chart positions: DE AT CH UK US