2012 is a big year for Blur, not only are the band headlining the Olympics closing ceremony concert, this year also marks the 21st anniversary of the release of their debut album Leisure.

As announced on the official Blur Facebook and Twitter pages; To celebrate this landmark a new deluxe box set is to be released along with expanded remastered albums and a new vinyl box.

Blur 21: The Box

Blur 21: The Box. A deluxe 21 disc set, featuring:

• All seven remastered albums – each with a bonus disc that contains unreleased extras, exclusive artwork, expanded booklets including liner notes based on new interviews with the band.
• Four discs of rarities, exclusive to the box set. Includes 3½ hours of previously unreleased material.
• Three DVDs includes two pivitol live shows (Showtime at Alexandra Palace on 7th October 1994, the previously unreleased 1½ hour long Singles Night show from Wembley on 11th December 1999 and an entire DVD of Blur video rarities.
• Collectable 7″ single of the rare and previously unreleased live recording of the Seymour-era Blur song Superman.
• Deluxe hard-bound book telling the story of Blur’s 21 year career.

Blur 21: The Vinyl Box

Blur 21: The Vinyl Box
contains all seven vinyl formats of the Blur albums collected together and housed in a study hard case, presenting the definitive collection of Blur vinyl.

Additionally all seven of the remastered albums will be available individually, each with bonus disc of material that includes previously unreleased extras, exclusive Blur artwork postcards, expanded booklets including previously unseen photographs and liner notes based on a brand new interview with the band.

The sets are due for release on 30th July 2012.

Amazon currently has Blur 21: The Box and Blur 21: The Vinyl Box available for pre-order at £157.99 each.

Blur 21

Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon spoke to Jo Whiley backstage at the Brit Awards.

Listen to the interview here:

Blur will headline a special one-off show in London’s Hyde Park to celebrate the end of the Olympic Games this summer.

The band, who will be honoured with the Outstanding Contribution To Music Award at tonight’s Brit Awards (February 21), will play the outdoor show on August 12 to coincide with the games’ closing ceremony.

Speaking in an exclusive interview you can read in this week’s NME, frontman Damon Albarn promised the show would be “brilliant”. He added:

It’ll be a proper party. It’s the closing night of the Olympics. Our raison d’etre is to provide another celebration of a fantastic day.

Blur will be joined by New Order and The Specials at the show, which is being billed as a ‘Best Of British’ event.

The show has been organised by BT London Live as part of a series of events to mark the Olympics. To pre-register for further ticket information, you need to register at BTLondonlive.com/tickets. Tickets will be made available on Friday (February 24) at 9am (GMT).

NME

Fool’s Day, the brand new song from Blur is here!

Blur’s first new song since 2003 is now available as a free download from www.blur.co.uk.

Fool’s Day was originally released on 7″ vinyl  limited to only 1000 copies for Record Store Day.

No Distance Left To Run the documentary about Blur is due for release on DVD through Parlophone on February 15, 2010.

It will be accompanied by a live recording of their performance at Hyde Park. The documentary was released in cinemas earlier this year.

The double disc set is available to pre-order now from Amazon.co.uk or hmv.com.

No Distance Left To Run due for release on DVD on February 15, 2010.

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