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Blur are back in the studio recording their seventh studio album, provisionally titled Sonic Safari.
Drowned in Sound caught up with bassist Alex James in London, where he revealed the band had been recording for a week. He could give no details of the direction they are taking on the new album as “it’s messed up right now.”
Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, is producing the new material. This will be the second time Blur have hired the services of a dance producer - William Orbit helmed their last studio album, 1999’s Thirteen.
'Sonic Safari' will be Blur’s first new material since last year’s 'Music is My Radar' single and the first since frontman Damon Albarn’s side-project Gorillaz became a runaway success.
James, who had been taking part in a debate on “the secret meaning of Posh and Becks” along with Germaine Greer, also revealed he stopped writing his “Alex James is Unwell” column for Q magazine because they “gave me the boot”. At the time he signed off giving the impression he was retiring of his own accord: “I’ve decided to hang up my pen and concentrate on my drinking” he wrote.
“I enjoyed doing that [column]” James told DiS, adding that he had not read Q since it dropped him in January this year.
