Blur have abandoned their comeback album, according to producer William Orbit. After months of "amazing" work, Damon Albarn recently called off the group's recording sessions, Orbit has said.
Orbit, who worked on two previous Blur albums, told NME the band were working on new material following their 2009 reunion. "The new stuff sounded amazing," he said. But three weeks ago, all that came to an end. "It was all over with Damon, and the rest of the band were like, 'Is this it?'"
As recently as January, Orbit was tweeting happily about Blur's recording sessions. "Loving the guitars you laid down!" he wrote in a message to Graham Coxon. "Vocal session March 3!" But when March came around, Orbit's tone was rather more dour: "Blur could have been good," he tweeted. "But Damon, brilliant and talented tho he is, is kinda a shit to the rest of Blur."
Although there were no guarantees about new Blur albums, there have been hints that something is afoot ahead of their appearance at the London Olympics closing concert. In February, Parklife producer Stephen Street said Blur were working with Orbit on a new single, Under the Westway. "I got the impression that they don't want the pressure of having to make a new [LP]," he said.
If Orbit's comments about Albarn seem unusually direct, he took a similar tone writing about Madonna last week. Orbit was heavily involved with the singer's commercially disappointing new album, MDNA. "You won't see me exactly jumping up and down with delight over the way that things have panned out," he said on Facebook. "We were very pushed for time … and various pressing commitments took up [Madonna's] limited time, such as perfume ranges and teen fashion contests and other such endeavours which are beyond my own limited understanding of pop star agendas." Orbit later removed the posts, apologising on Twitter: "I regret that I said [these things] online. Not fair to M."
