Damon Albarn has been speaking to Xfm about his plans for a brand new “aggressively laid back” Blur EP to be released before the end of the year, plus the possibility of some low key live dates.

Following reports that the new Blur material will be more lo-fi and stripped down than their previous work, Albarn spoke to Xfm and explained that fans will probably be able to hear new material from the band pretty soon (if they can find it).

“I think we’re gonna do an EP first, sometime by the end of this year,” he confessed, “But you probably won’t know about it. It’ll just ‘come out’. It’ll be so, sort of, underplayed. It’ll come out but you won’t know it’s us as it’ll be so, well, not us.”

“We’ve got the songs but we’re gonna record them in a few hours and just be very laid back about it. But not musically laid back. It’ll be aggressive. Aggressively laid back. It’s the total opposite of Gorillaz.

“I can’t really make another Blur record that’s a big landscape sort of thing, due to my very basic guitar ability. Cos I want to sing and play so it has to be three chords. I can only do three chords and not look at the guitar.”

Albarn also kyboshed the idea of getting a new guitarist to replace the long departed Graham Coxon saying, “What’s the point? We’d never be able to get one as good as Graham.”

He also admitted that Blur would be playing some live dates towards the end of the year, saying they’d, “Probably do a couple of pubs round Christmas. To be honest with you, it’ll be nice.”

Xfm