‘Blur’ Drummer David Rowntree, is running in the Marylebone High Street By-Election. The election is on Thursday, 3rd May 2007.

UPDATE: Dave Rowntree was not elected. Here’s a PDF of the results.

The first release from Dave Rowntree’s new band, The Ailerons, the Left Right EP, is out now, exclusively through iTunes. The tracklisting for the EP is: Dig A Hole/ Waking Fever/ Bonafone/ Roll Over. ‘Dig A Hole’ has also been made ‘Single Of The Week’ so it can be download completely free!

Click here to download the ‘Left Right EP‘.

The Ailerons are a five-piece band formed in London during the summer of 2005 by Blur drummer Dave Rowntree, Mike Smith (keyboards for Blur and MD for Gorillaz live shows) and American-born singer Charity Hair. The line up is completed by Grog on bass and Dan Beattie on guitar.

The Ailerons produce shiny, noisy, smart pop music. Inspirations include Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Coen Brothers, grilled haloumi and American Renegades.

Parlophone

Blur drummer Dave Rowntree is calling for recording artists to be given a cut of internet music sharing profits.

The SONG 2 hitmaker is campaigning for musicians to be rewarded by the organisations who have benefited from the recent surge in music downloads, in a scheme called Value Recognition Right.

Rowntree says, “The changes that have happened in the past few years are here to stay. It’s not realistic to think that we can un-invent the internet, MP3 players, or recordable CDs, or stop people sharing music by telling them we don’t like it. Music is a social activity and always has been. It’s fashion.”

“That’s why I like the idea of the Value Recognition Right. It lets us take a cut of the money being made by industries that profit from music sharing. It gives us the right to grant a license to ISPs, MP3 player manufacturers and others, so we can give consumers the right to do what they’re going to do anyway. “

“We’re pragmatic people and we don’t want to put anyone out of business.”

via contactmusic.com

Dave Rowntree’s animation, Empire Square, is back on TV. The half-hour Empire Square Special is repeated on Channel 4 this Saturday (02.07.2005) night at 00.20

While Blur may be on temporary hiatus, drummer Dave Rowntree has been working hard directing a new animated series ‘Empire Sq.’ and spoke exclusively to Xfm about his new creations, life as Blur’s drummer and why it’d be “fantastic” to have a Blur World Exclusive to report.

The series ‘Empire Sq.’ plays on the theory that if ‘video nasties’ could launch the popularity of VCR’s and sites with, ahem, questionable content could popularise the Internet, then an animation series of dubious tastes could become a hit on state of the art mobile phones.

“The animations are designed to work on TV, the Internet and mobile phones, so that’s why the characters are very pixelly with very sharp colours,” Rowntree explains. “We decided the more we pushed the boundaries of taste the better. We began working on a show aimed at kids, but the more we worked on it, the more we realised the taste police scrutinise everything and you get very little freedom.”

“So we started on an adult series addressing topics that really got under our skin. The three main characters react to a world they don’t understand, but they exploit it to get what they want from it.”

He also explained that while he may be up to his eyeballs in digital animations, he never really gives up the day job.

“I never stop playing the drums to be honest,” he insists. “Just because I’m not on the road with Blur doesn’t mean I stop playing, that would be insane. Like stopping breathing. I’ve had two or three parallel careers for about twenty years now, but I’m finally realising there’re only so many hours in the day. So while I’m a megalomaniac in some respects, for the series my role is strictly as director.”

Dave was also dying to give Xfm Online an exclusive insight into the current goings on in the Blur camp, but seemed to suddenly lose the power of speech.

“It would be wonderful if I could exclusively reveal what we were up to at the moment, wouldn’t it? Yeah that would be fantastic”

Curses.

For more information on Empire Sq. go to www.empiresq.com or tune in to Channel 4 as Empire Sq takes over the 4Music zone for a 12 week run. Episodes will be shown from 11:30pm. For information on how to get the series sent directly to your mobile, check out the website.

Xfm