Damon Albarn - Solo The Culture Show


Damon Albarn - Solo

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I suppose because I have spent a lot of my life playing with huge great

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groups of people, or being a cartoon... Or being in a band...

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It's quite a difficult thing for me to do to make a solo record. It is

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quite an amazing thing to think that he has had a career of 25 years and

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this is his first album that is lyrically about his life. You

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definitely get an insight into him on this. There is a lot of very

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revealing and honest facets of him on display here. I think he's making

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himself quite honourable with the record.

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# we are Everyday Robots on our phones, in the process of getting

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home... It became a record where I was very

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much singing about my own experiences. How do we know that we

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really exist, other than that beam of light which is our history. I

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started going back to places which I felt might give me some sense of who

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am I now and how do I feel about stuff. So I went back to

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Leytonstone. Change here for London Underground services...

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The first time I came back, when I came out of the tube, I literally

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felt like a giant. Because all my memories are from up to the age of

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nine. I grew up in 1970s multicultural London. From the

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smells of food coming out of people's back kitchens, from the

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people I went to school with, to the music, to the general flavour of the

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place, I think that definitely played a big part in who I am. I

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just heard you were brought up here. Yes, just down the road. You

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still look the same! Still as hot as ever! This is Philippa Road where I

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grew up. -- 's Brook Road. I lived here with my mum, my dad and my

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sister. For a brief while, my uncle and his family lived upstairs. And a

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bit later on, my auntie randomly moved in with a guy to live next

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door. My mum worked with kids with learning disabilities, teaching

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them. And my dad worked at the north-east London Polytechnic

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teaching art. Keith Albarn is head of the Margate

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project. What is it going to be like? It is a series of capsules.

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The whole thing depends on the visitor and it is activated by the

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visitor and comes to life by the visitor. Every time you come back to

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this, it should be a very different adventure. Both my parents still

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make art. My sister is the same. We are just one of those families where

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that is what we did. I was pretty lucky in the sense that there didn't

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seem to be many boundaries about what you could and could not do. I

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suppose I grew up in that sort of environment. That more than anything

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has informed to I am. This is where I grew up, number 21. Very happy

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memories. I used to enjoy going down that coal chute, can you believe it?

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I think I was just a very ordinary kid, I liked mucking about on my

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bicycle. I just remember it being a really nice communal sort of

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street. There was a synagogue over the other side. Leytonstone

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represents to me a series of windows into other cultures that felt very

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accessible. So when I got any opportunity to look through those

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windows, I did. # on the Hollow ponds, set sail, in

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the heatwave that hit us all, 1976...

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Down there is the high road. We are sort of at the edge of Hollow ponds

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now, which is really the catalyst for the whole record, really. It is

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quite an eerie, eerie place. Imagine what it is like on a moonlit night.

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When I came back here, everything started flooding back. 1976, anyone

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who is my age or older would remember as being an incredible

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summer. A place like this was like going on holiday. But I do remember

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it being packed, packed, packed, packed full of people. People who

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would not normally ever getting a pair of trunks were there. It was a

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real coming out moment I think for London. London sort of saw itself

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naked in a way that summer. Then it turned into a song really. 1976 was

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such a strong date that I thought I could continue taking these

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snapshots of important moments for me.

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It is really important, when you are starting a new thing, whether it is

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a book, an album, a painting or a creative process, you are sort of

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stepping into, you need a moment where something gives you the

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confidence to continue, that it is not just an empty page you are

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staring at. That is what happened when I came here. It really had a

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very strong effect on me. Look, they have all come to say hello to us.

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Hello. This is the Pentecostal City Mission

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Church. I used to cycle up here. I remember vividly stopping on a

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Sunday, just sort of listening and this amazing sound used to come out

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of this place. # Mr Tembo is on his way up the

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hill, to tell you how he feels, where he is now isn't what he

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planned, where he is now wasn't what he planned. Mr Tembo is on his way

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up the hill with only this song to tell you how he feels, but to get

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there, he will need a helping hand, where he is now, it wasn't what he

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planned... The connection is a mad connection, but this little

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elephant, Mr Tembo, that I met in Tanzania, the guys who look after

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him, watch a lot of gospel on television and listen to it all the

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time, so the elephant has grown up with gospel music. If it ever hears

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the song, I would like it if it had a gospel flavour to it. Mr Tembo is

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really honest. It is about an elephant that he saw. I think he

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thought, do I want to show people this? Yes, definitely. It was very

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authentic to me. I think it is quite a life affirming record and it has

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got joyous qualities to it. We are on a bridge now that did not

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exist when I lived here. I am looking at the skyline which

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definitely did not exist when I lived here. My old road was cut in

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half and this huge road was built which is kind of weird because this

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leads up to Colchester, 55 miles up the road. When I moved to

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Colchester, I felt like a real outsider. I did not fit in. And

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everything changed. I think any kid that moves can't

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help but be slightly affected by that. It was such a different

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culture. Essentially, very Anglo-Saxon and quite conservative.

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I would say almost the antithesis of Leytonstone. But it also had this

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really kind of magical Englishness about it. They are my two

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influences. Englishness and that multicultural nests.

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As a kid, you had to have a bicycle otherwise you did not get anywhere,

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so I did a lot of cycling. This is a mad little place. It has got what,

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one, two, three, four... About 18 houses and three pubs. You know I

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was talking about it being quite Anglo-Saxon around here, this is

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actually the path up to my old house round the back. You get the gist. So

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you imagine, coming from Leytonstone to hear, it was like... I used to do

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my paper rounds in there. This is where we moved to, this place here.

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It wasn't a bakery, obviously, but it is called the old bakery. And

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that is my bedroom. That is where I lived, in that room. But this is

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like the back alley of a pub, so you can imagine it was pretty lively at

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night. I was basically, you are basically

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on your own. My sister, there were a couple of other kids in the village

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but it was quite a sort of, you know, not lonely but self

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introverted. No, that is the wrong word as well. I am finding it quite

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difficult to talk about this. There is so much of who I am here.

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# When your body aches # When the dreams we keep

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# And the bow goes up # Just live the dream

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# It will be a silent day... # So, this is Aldham Church.

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I had permission on Saturday mornings to come and play the organ.

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This is the organ. My mum organised it. You know, there was no-one here

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so I could kind of play what I wanted.

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Quite a singular thing to be doing when you're a teenager, to be

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sitting on your own in a church and be playing an organ. This is when I

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sort of took classical music quite serious seriously. I had a piano

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teacher that I went to every week. I enjoyed playing classical music, but

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found it quite restricting. By the time I was 13, I was probably

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playing in the cabin at school with Graham so we were thinking in those

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terms. Not grand terms, but just, sort of, maybe getting a band

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together at some point. I wouldn't have become musical I

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don't think in the way that I did if I hadn't have moved here. Everything

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changed. In my life, it was cataclysmic. Music and cycling in

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Essex. # Golden brown

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# Texture like sun... # We are going to Fiddler's Wood. This

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being the countryside. It's one of many places I used to hang out. I

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come back here a lot actually over the years trying to find a

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particular tree that I used to, I don't know, sort of... How can you

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explain it without sounding really odd? I suppose it is odd, but I had

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a tree and I used to bury stuff underneath it. You know, just sort

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of momentos and, I don't know, maybe sort of playing around with

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schoolboy magic, just a very private kind of thing.

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The reason why this has some special significance to me is related to

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something that happened a few years late later when I was walking with

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my mum in the wood. Locally, this wood's got a bit of a reputation as

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being a bit sort of other worldly. That afternoon, I was walking with

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my mum, coming to show her this tree that I'd made my own sort of little

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special place. And we were standing by it and we suddenly realised there

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was something slightly different about the space around it.

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And I looked down and there was this huge great pentangle that had been

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built around the tree. So you can imagine that that was kind of a bit

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shocking really. It's really hard to articulate what it meant and I still

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don't really understand what it meant but it did haunt me for many,

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many years. That experience is sort of peppered over the album. That

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singular thing. You know, it's not all just put into one song, it's the

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feelings around it. My feelings about being back here, they seem

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very sort of, they seem concentrated here.

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# In the process of getting home # Looking like standing... #

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We had to adapt the songs for that context. The streamlines were kind

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of lifted from the original recordings. It's really about making

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the songs breathe. The whole atmosphere of the record is this

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beautiful space so you are really focussed on what the vocal is doing

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and what Damon is singing about. # In the process of getting home...

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# Damon clan rates and shares his

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music. It's personal and he shares it. It's a shared experience and we

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are all very keen to get across what he's trying to say within songs.

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Good. Great. Like any enterprise, there's a lot of people involved.

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It's not just me. It would be very lonely if it was just me. Pf

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Two reasons so far. Birthday. Chelsea have just beaten Man U 3-1.

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It's important to allow it to be a bit more multidimensional than just

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your own thing, especially if it's very personal. It can get precious.

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I'm always grabbing moments on my own and working on new stuff.

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Song-writing is a solitary discipline anyway really. The basic

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idea is something I do on my own in. That sense, it's not really vastly

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different from what I've done all my life.

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Sundance is obviously a place where new trends and premiers go. What

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brings you here to showcase your record? That's an interesting

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question. It's a good, healthy mix of independent and mainstream. I

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suppose for someone like me, that's probably my natural environment.

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Do you want a catch-up or anything? No, we are English. It's hard

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talking about something I've not presented yet. I'm writing in its

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infancy at the moment. Tomorrow night is my first public

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performance. It's really, really hard to imagine what will happen.

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If you over the years have liked my more sort of melancholic

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introspective stuff, then you might like this record.

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I'm delighted to introduce Damon Albarn. I've been a long-term fan of

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his restless creative output from blur to Gorillaz from the Good to

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Bad, and he's a solo independent artist. Please welcome to the stage,

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Damon Albarn. MUSIC: Honourable lady low ponds

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Leader of the MUSIC

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Hollow Ponds... If you like him, you'll probably

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love it. I suppose people could have the opposite reaction as well. This

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is the difference between someone who's really artistic. You know,

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it's like how far are you willing or able to reach in and how much of

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that are you comfortable putting out there for people to see? For those

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who give a, I'm not assuming anyone does, but hopefully there's a bit of

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an insight into who I am. Otherwise, it's a neurotic, letch-handed middle

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aged man talking nonsense out there into the void.

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-- left handed middle aged man.

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