Five days that were a bit of a Blur

By Hazel Sheffield

What does it take to get a great band back in the studio after a long gap? A cancelled gig in Hong Kong. With five days to kill, Blur crammed into a sweaty studio and started making an album as a quartet for the first time since the 1990s. “It felt like the best thing we had ever done,” said Alex James, the bass player and cheesemaker. “Then nothing happened for 18 months. I thought, oh no, here we go again.”