TO mark the screening of Blur's New World Towers film at the Firstsite Art Gallery in Colchester next week here's Neil D'Arcy-Jones' interview with Graham Coxon earlier this year.

Blur: New World Towers, Firstsite Gallery, Lewis Gardens, Colchester, December 2, 7.30pm. 01206 577067.

NO one was expecting a new album from Blur...not even the musicians who made it.

“There were never any formal plans to make an album,”

guitarist Graham Coxon tells me. “It just happened. There was a certain amount of pressure from fans but we were too busy touring and I suppose that was part of it, really.

“We were a band in danger of becoming a bit of a glorified tribute group, just doing shows playing all our old stuff. We couldn’t just go on doing that so maybe we needed that time to record some new material as well.”

The opportunity came during a break in touring in spring 2013 when they found themselves at Avon Studios in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

“We had done a couple of shows in Hong Kong,” Graham continues, “and we were supposed to go to Japan for a show there but that had been cancelled. Suddenly we had five days to ourselves so we decided to make good use of it and go into the studio.

“Damon had some ‘Garage Band’ ideas he wanted us to listen to and it went from there.”

It must have been enjoyable to be back in the recording studio with his old friends, I suggest.

“There’s nothing enjoyable about being in a recording studio,” Graham says. “It’s actually quite gruelling. We would go around playing with these chord sequences over and over again for about seven or eight hours each day.

“We entered the zone playing off each other, exhausting each and every idea we had. The only really enjoyable bit was at the end of the day feeling we had actually accomplished something. That was pretty pleasing.

“We still didn’t know we were making an album when we were making it, though.”

After Hong Kong the band put the recordings to one side, continued their tour, and after arriving back in the UK “returned to their lives”.

Last November Graham revisited the tracks, drafting in Blur’s early producer Stephen Street to work on them before handing them over to Damon who then added the lyrics.

Graham says: “I was just sitting around on the sofa one day when I thought ‘what about those recordings we did in Hong Kong?’ “Stephen came in to help me and as we were going through them we both sat there pleasantly surprised with what we had. There was tonnes of really good stuff on there.”

Stephen went through the tracks over three days and then Graham joined him over the next four weeks to, as he puts it “knock them into shape”.

“That’s when it got exciting,”

he says. “Especially as it all came together and how effortless the songs sounded.

During the process I did make a conscious decision not to keep reaching for the guitar. I wanted to use all kinds of other instruments because I wanted the music to be inspiring for Damon when we presented it to him.”

On Monday the world finally got to see the result of that lengthy process with the release of the band’s eighth album and the first one in 16 years as a four-piece.

Forming in London in 1988, the genesis of the band took place years earlier in their home town of Colchester when Damon and Graham first met at Stanway School.

While Damon’s family no longer live in the town, Graham’s still do and although he jokes he doesn’t get out much these days, when he does he occasionally pops back home to see his folks.

“The problem with coming back home,” he explains, “is all my old haunts have gone. Well they’ve changed anyway. The arts centre’s still the same thank goodness. We used to play jam sessions there all the time over some carrot cake, which was very nice.

“I enjoyed going back to play at the East Anglian Railway Museum when we got back together. One of our friends lived near there, so we used to spend a lot of time hanging about the place and that’s why our first gig was there.”

Perhaps we can look forward to the band returning to the town?

“Unfortunately where we play is decided by the grown-ups,” he reveals. “It would be great to play Colchester again.”

Seeing as another gig is out of the question, and knowing how good an artist Graham is, I ask him about the possibility of an art exhibition at the town’s new multi-million pound gallery, Firstsite.

“I’ve been trying to get a little more space together to do some painting,” he adds. “I’ve never exhibited my work but I’m starting to get a little braver.

Maybe when all this has stopped I will think about getting some work together and finally put on an exhibition and who knows, perhaps that can be in Colchester.”

REVIEW - The Magic Whip

So Welcome back Blur

Colchester’s most successful musical export return with their eighth studio album, and one we all thought we’d never see.

It’s 16 years since their last album as a four-piece and one wonders whether such a long wait was ever going to be worth it.

Don’t worry – it most definitely is.

What Blur have done so brilliantly this time around is conjure up an album that sounds very much like a Blur album but at the same time is very different to anything they have done before.

Recording it in Hong Kong definitely helped with the oriental influences permeating through many of the tracks from Thought I Was a Spaceman, Mirror Ball, Ong Ong and Lonesome Street.

The latter two, along with I Broadcast, which highlights guitarist Graham Coxon’s trademark punchy rifs, are for me the standout tracks on the album.

Opener Lonesome Street is a real throwback to those early Modern Life is Rubbish days, while Ong Ong is the band at their best, a summery, infectious pop delight of a song that will have you humming along to its refrain for weeks.

And then there are the tracks where they don’t sound like Blur at all.

The dreamy Thought I Was a Spaceman has an Eighties synth-sound, There Are Too Many of Us sounds like Pink Floyd and Ghost Ship could be the Style Council.

Blur are back.

NEIL D’ARCY-JONES