Word: blur
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...jumping up and down on an abandoned trailer in Morocco is what it takes for Blur front man Damon Albarn to find the right sound - so be it. One man's ranting antic is another's creative ritual, and this one turns up as the rhythmic squeaking on the track Gene by Gene from the band's just-released seventh album, Think Tank. But it's also understandable that after 14 years, guitarist Graham Coxon finally decided he'd had enough of Albarn's calisthenics, and left the band in September last year, soon after work on the record began...
...down from a challenge. He has always been ready to struggle to get his own way, starting with the public potshots he exchanged with Oasis in the mid-'90s, during the media-fueled battle - mods vs. rockers redux - for the Britpop crown. "It was definitely cathartic," says Albarn on Blur's rivalry with Oasis. "For us it was more of a diversion than an impetus. It has always seemed a ridiculous coupling." He has a point: where Oasis was lager louts, Blur was college boys. And these days, with the Gallagher brothers still playing to the Britpop nostalgia crowd - churning...
...weather and environment it was made in." But Think Tank is more than a grown-up-rocker-discovers-Afropop indulgence. The production involvement of Norman Cook (Fat Boy Slim) and remix-master William Orbit was an inspired stroke, but their hand is light, quelling fears that this would be Blur's dance album. The opening track, Ambulance - which would sit easily on David Bowie's Low - begins with a declaration: "I ain't got nothing to be scared of." And Albarn does seem musically fearless. Think Tank is often experimental but never jarring, mixing synth and acoustic picking...
...other problems Bok addresses in the book are more complex, as increasing commercial opportunities, particularly in the sciences, threaten to blur the line between academic and corporate worlds. As venture capital and biotechnology opportunities increase, he writes, money-making moves closer to laboratories and classrooms...
...also warned of the power of the media to create further myth surrounding sex and sexuality and to blur the line between fiction and reality...