Damon Albarn: The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows review – beautifully haunting

(Transgressive)
One of the driven artists of the Britpop era, now unbothered by business success, is back with a second solo album that drifts alongside in a melancholy, stoned mist

When Might’s Glastonbury livestream finally creaked into life, it provided viewers an fascinating research in contrasts. At 9pm, Coldplay appeared, rolling out the large hits from their 20-year career on an illuminated platform in front of the Pyramid stage, the empty subject crammed with lights. It was a performance with a definite hint of top-dog gamesmanship about it: ignore the operating order – everyone is aware of who the headliners are here. Afterwards, the cameras minimize to a mulleted Damon Albarn seated at a piano. He performed a collection of serpentine unreleased songs, adorned with shivering, abstract electronics and guitar and infrequently atonal string preparations. He performed a track from Dr Dee, his 2011 opera concerning the 16th-century mathematician, astronomer and occultist. And when he finally dished up one thing from the Blur or Gorillaz catalogues that the casual observer may know, it was rearranged in a method that made it sound darker and sadder.

It was a neat illustration of Albarn’s modern strategy to music-making. By all accounts one of the crucial zealously pushed artists of the Britpop era, he has spent the last 20 years doing something you'd anticipate more major rock stars to do, however that hardly any truly appear to manage: utilizing the area and time created by vast success with a purpose to do precisely what they need, unbothered by business considerations. Doing exactly what he needs has typically occasioned more huge success – Gorillaz’s second album Demon Days bought 8m copies worldwide – however there have also been musicals with lyrics in Cantonese, collaborative tasks influenced by Sun Ra, Funkadelic and Fela Kuti, and soundtracks for immersive theatre works carried out by the Kronos Quartet, none of which look like have been made with an eye fixed on the charts or prime billing at festivals.