Music

It’s a sunny, if brittle, afternoon at the Tabernacle community centre near Portobello Road. Loud, unidentifiable music rumbles out from the upstairs rehearsal space. To the disinterest of the kids hanging around outside, it is being made by the indie equivalent of the Million Dollar Quartet, comprising Damon Albarn on the old Joanna, Paul Simonon on bass, former Verve man Simon Tong on guitar and African jazz superstar Tony Allen all over the drums like hot sauce. They don’t want you to call them a supergroup. They don’t even want you to call them a group. In fact, they haven’t even got a name. ‘I suppose when we were 17 and we were a bit insecure and we needed a sense of identity, having a name was useful,’ ponders Simonon. Feature continues

‘But it’s a bit embarrassing being in a gang when you get to our age,’ says Albarn.

They will, inevitably, be referred to by the name of the album they have produced. It’s called ‘The Good, The Bad And The Queen’, and it’s about you. The title, you see, refers to the forms of life that shelter under London’s umbrella.

‘It’s a kingdom in itself, the City Of London,’ Simonon says. ‘Although these days it is like lots of villages combined. You can come from Bromley now and you’re a true Londoner. You can have Bow Bells playing on a tape machine when your kids are being born if you want.’ ‘You can have it on your ringtone,’ smiles Albarn, ‘and then you’ll always be within the sound of Bow Bells!' They both fall about laughing.

The Artists Currently Working On The Project Known As The Good The Bad And The Queen are rehearsing for their live debut at the Roundhouse next week. This is unusual insofar as they haven’t got a record out – the album isn’t due to be released until January and even the first single, ‘Herculean’, a slow-burning hymn to London’s multiplicity, will be deleted on the same day it’s released.

While the project has been shrouded in so much secrecy that few people have even heard of it, the album began a long time ago, as Blur wound down. Albarn’s old label offered him a one-single deal for his nascent musical scheme, then known as Gorilla, in return for a Blur best-of. ‘I thought that was a pretty good offer,’ chuckles Albarn. So Blur went back into the studio to record the customary bonus track, called ‘Music Is My Radar’.

‘We weren’t getting along very well at the time, but the song we produced was completely bonkers. It ends with me repeating this phrase, “Tony Allen got me dancing”, as I was listening to a lot of Nigerian music at the time.’

At the time it was unusual for an indie band to namecheck an Afrobeat master like Tony Allen, the legendary former percussionist spoken of in reverent tones by even his former band leader, Fela Kuti. Word of this tribute got back to Allen and he invited Albarn to join him for a show he was playing in Paris.