lefreeakblog

      Damon Albarn surely has to be one of Britain's greatest active singer-songwriters and one of the last true auteurs. As a wee young lad I was an Oasis fan and derided Blur  for being a bit silly and for, well not being Oasis. But how wrong I was to do this as Blur firstly released their self-titled fifth LP and then Albarn created a new virtual band which allowed him to move out of the shadow of the restrictive Britpop label and grow wings and go on an incredible run of releasing new music every few years. In the twenty three years since Albarn has released solo work, soundtracked a Chinese opera, formed his London supergroup The Good, The Bad & The Queen, reunited Blur and continue the aforementioned Gorillaz including their most recent release, November 2020's Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez .       Albarn's ability to create a pop song are second to none with his style developing as he goes. At the beginning of his career, Alba...

Masks. They're everywhere! In my household, the latest series of The Masked Singer is proving a big hit, the latest series of a format that originally started in South Korea and spread to Australia, US and now UK and is basically reality tv featuring performers singing behind a mask and/or a costume and trying not be voted off (and thus having to reveal who you are). We're also now having to wear masks where we leave the house, enter shops etc as part of the pandemic restrictions which of course we should all be adhering to. But it was the  recent sad news of the passing of MF DOOM - a rapper who always wore a mask on stage - that got me thinking about them and in particular which musicians wore them as part of their act. So the following is a quick - I stress quick! - list of 10 artists that came to mind: MF DOOM: famed for his signature metal mask, that of Marvel Comics super-villain Doctor Doom, from whom he adopted the name. He rarely made public appearances without it. Ma...