Exactly 40 days after Damon Albarn surprised with the news of a new separation from Blurthe music festival Coachella announced its imminent edition on Tuesday night. In the programming, you can see the quartet as headliner on Saturdays, April 13 and 20, supporting rapper Tyler, the Creator. Although it seemed like fake news or a design error, the group itself came out to confirm it this Wednesday through its profile on the social network X. Incidentally, it was left as a posted tweet. That is, right on top of everything, posting a photo of one of their last live shows with the flyer for the event held in the Californian town of Indio. The reaction to possibly the “fastest meeting in rock history” It didn’t take long for his fans to wait. There was a mix of joy, indignation, ridicule and even memes about how to make money to pay for the trip there.
On December 7, the frontman took advantage of an interview in the French magazine The Unrockuptibles to confirm the separation. “This is too much for me. “It was the right thing to do and an immense honor to play these songs again, spend time with these guys, make an album, blah, blah, blah.” And so as not to leave any loose ends, she concluded: “I’m not saying that I won’t do it again, it was a beautiful success, but I’m not staying in the past. It is time to conclude this campaign.” Those words resonated strongly in Argentina, because she converted Buenos Aires in the last city of the tour in which this incarnation of the band performed. It happened on the last festival date Primavera Soundwhere they also showed some of the songs from their most recent album, the commendable The Ballad of Darrenwhich in the end-of-year surveys was among the highlights of 2023.
In the publication, whose cover brought him together with icons of French culture of the caliber of Charlotte Gainsbourg, Etienne Daho and Justine Triet (with the title “The best of 2023”), the London musician and composer took stock of his year: “I had a good year. I even did a lot,” he said in the note, which referred to the end of Blur’s tour in South America. “But I still find it difficult to define 2023 as ‘one year.’ I do not know why. I began a studio construction project in the countryside, which occupied both my mind and my body. It is a very quiet place where I spent a lot of my time. I raise chickens, which requires a lot of investment. I became even more involved in this opera (referring to the second part of The magic Flute, by Goethe), which will be presented in Paris next year. And I also made a Gorillaz album that I performed at Coachella.”
Cracker Island is the title of Gorillaz’s latest studio album, released in May of last year. Among the guests on the album stand out Stevie Nicks, Thundercat, Tame Impala, Bad Bunny y Beck. The latter and his British counterpart coincided at the Buenos Aires Primavera Sound, and joined forces in the American musician’s performance not to make the song they recorded for the new part of Albarn’s parallel project, but rather they invoked another previous collaboration recorded for the same sound laboratory : “The Valley of the Pagans.” While the duet was a global event, now the news of Blur’s return to Coachella is. Although it won’t be the first time they perform at that festival, it will be an ideal showcase to play. The Ballad of Darren and to also celebrate 30 years of Parklifehis masterpiece, which will be completed on April 25.
“From Colchester to Coachella. See you again in the desert”Blur posted on X. Albarn reposted it on the same social network. At the musical meeting he will share the grid with Lana Del Rey, the Mexican Featherweight (of which Albarn is a fan), the Argentine Bizarrap; J Blavin, Doja Cat, Khruangbin, Jungle and the reunited No Doubt, among many others. Before that landing, the frontman will be in South America again, specifically in São Paulo, on February 23, performing with Africa Express, one of his many ventures. The project is described as “a multicultural ecosystem that brings together musicians, singers and DJs from Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Algeria, Ethiopia and South Africa with colleagues from the West.” Something impossible to see in this Argentina of the ultralibertarian diet.
