6 licks of The Magic Whip

Blur's Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon speak to Steve Lamacq about recording a studio album together for the first time in 12 years.

Get a taste of the interview in 6 licks:

“We made it almost deliberately claustrophobic using our B-team equipment, the backup stuff… It’s never totally enjoyable because you’re trawling your brain for something good to play and there's an element of unease.”– Graham

“I go [to Hong Kong] and always buy fireworks because everyone just has an insane explosion at New Year's Eve. Within this vast box of rockets that could take you to Greenland, there were these little indoor fireworks, kids’ fireworks basically, and one was called the magic whip. The record wasgoing to be called Made In Hong Kong.” - Damon

“I didn’t want to be part of the sifting. Visually in my head the idea of that is drowning in a huge swimming pool of noise…

And I thought who’s the bloke for the job? Who do we trust and who can we be honest with? Obviously if you’re in a band it’s cool, you’re jamming and you love it. But someone listening to that is going to be bored out of their skull because a lot of it needs cutting.” – Graham

“The first tune they played me was Lonesome Street and as I listened to the rest there were songs I can’t even remember that we’d done, which is the nicest sort of present that you can ever have... Because you listen to it in an utterly different way.” – Damon

“I went back for just a day and a half with only one thing in my mind, which was reliving and capturing much of what Hong Kong felt emotionally to me. I stayed in the same hotel, went on the same train to Jordan, same street, same studio... Then I went out to the islands. I was in a bit of a dream.” – Damon

Go Out: "I love singing it live I hope people take to that one."
My Terracotta Heart: "Really hard to sing because it’s so quiet, so going from mass dynamic to that is going to be difficult but we just need to do a string of gigs to get back in the saddle." - Damon

Blur’s new album The Magic Whip is 6Music’s Album of the Day. Listen to the full interview with Steve Lamacq: