Damon Albarn: The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows review – beautifully haunting

(Transgressive)
Some of the pushed artists of the Britpop period, now unbothered by business success, is back with a second solo album that drifts along in a melancholy, stoned mist

When Might’s Glastonbury livestream finally creaked into life, it provided viewers an fascinating research in contrasts. At 9pm, Coldplay appeared, rolling out the large hits from their 20-year career on an illuminated platform in front of the Pyramid stage, the empty subject crammed with lights. It was a performance with a distinct hint of top-dog gamesmanship about it: ignore the operating order – everybody is aware of who the headliners are right here. Afterwards, the cameras minimize to a mulleted Damon Albarn seated at a piano. He carried out a collection of serpentine unreleased songs, adorned with shivering, summary electronics and guitar and infrequently atonal string preparations. He played a music from Dr Dee, his 2011 opera concerning the 16th-century mathematician, astronomer and occultist. And when he lastly dished up something from the Blur or Gorillaz catalogues that the casual observer may know, it was rearranged in a means that made it sound darker and sadder.

It was a neat illustration of Albarn’s modern strategy to music-making. By all accounts some of the zealously driven artists of the Britpop period, he has spent the final 20 years doing one thing you'd anticipate extra major rock stars to do, however that hardly any truly seem to handle: utilizing the area and time created by vast success as a way to do exactly what they need, unbothered by business considerations. Doing precisely what he needs has typically occasioned extra huge success – Gorillaz’s second album Demon Days bought 8m copies worldwide – however there have additionally been musicals with lyrics in Cantonese, collaborative tasks influenced by Sun Ra, Funkadelic and Fela Kuti, and soundtracks for immersive theatre works carried out by the Kronos Quartet, none of which look like have been made with an eye fixed on the charts or prime billing at festivals.