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

Empire Sq, the animation by Dave Rowntree of Blur gets it’s TV debut on Channel 4 on the 18th February.

The animation has been running on empiresq.com for around a year now where all the previous episodes can be viewed online.

A trailer for the forthcoming Channel 4 show is on the Empire Sq. website.