The Duke Ellington album that inspired Damon Albarn
Every musician will want to have a broad palette of influences to work with. No artist is confined to just one genre, and the key to a stable recording career has always been mixing things up to find a different angle to work from. Although Damon Albarn has expanded his musical taste well beyond traditional rock formats, one of his biggest influences came from another genre altogether.
Compared to the other bands coming out around the same time, Albarn never quite fit under the Britpop, as many people thought. Despite the bitter rivalry between the Essex-born group and Oasis during their 1990s prime, Blur were always interested in going against the grain of traditional rock music while occasionally borrowing from the sounds of rock and roll history like The Kinks.
After the band tired of their initial sound on albums like The Great Escape, their self-titled effort would be their first bold exploration away from Britpop tropes. While the group would break in America on the record thanks to ‘Song 2’, the rest of the album and 1999’s 13 would be bold sonic explorations apart from traditional rock, even paving the way for what Albarn would do with the animated group Gorillaz.
Once the band went on hiatus, Albarn’s need to flex his muscles creatively led to him embracing any genre under the sun with Gorillaz. Although Albarn could wear various musical hats with his voice and a couple of instruments, he claimed that one of his key inspirations came from jazz.
When talking to The Guardian about his favourite albums, Albarn singled out Duke Ellington as a significant inspiration, citing the album Concert for Sacred Music as one of the critical pieces of his record collection. Tapping into the spiritual side of popular music, the jazz legend incorporates various traditional hymns into his repertoire, all while sprinkling touches of contemporary harmony into the music.
According to Albarn, this was a landmark moment for his musical taste, saying, “Duke Ellington claimed it wasn’t a mass, it was something new – I suppose a fusion between jazz and spirituality. But it’s very experimental and I like the idea that the older he got, the more experimental he got. It’s a fucking brilliant record”.
While Albarn claimed not to listen to jazz that much in his spare time, that sense of sonic adventure has carried him through every new record he has made. Although Ellington might not be easy to spot in an album like Gorillaz, for instance, Albarn’s willingness to see wherever the music takes him has kept his music constantly interesting, moving from the single power of ‘Clint Eastwood’ to the fantastic trip-hop stylings of ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’.
That sense of adventure hasn’t stopped, either. Both with Blur and in Gorillaz, Albarn has kept up his streak for writing songs as another creative challenge, working to bring the best out of himself and his guests on albums like Song Machine. Even though Albarn and jazz might live on two opposing radio stations, that sense of sonic exploration is an intrinsic part of his sonic identity.
