Magic Whip

Personnel: Stephen Street (synthesizer, percussion programming).Audio Mixers: Stephen Sedgwick; Stephen Street.Recording information: Assault And Battery II; Avon Studios, Hong Kong; Studio 13, London; The Bunker, Miloco.Blur dissolved slowly so it follows that their reunion was protracted -- a halting reconvening that produced understated singles and excellent concerts spread out over a period of six years. Finding a headlining appearance at Japan's Tokyo Rocks festival canceled in the summer of 2013, the band holed up in a Hong Kong studio for five days, producing several reels of jams they abandoned until guitarist Graham Coxon decided to shape them into songs with the assistance of producer Stephen Street, the collaborator behind their greatest albums of the '90s. It's an unwieldy history for The Magic Whip, a record that's casually confident and so assured in its attack it feels like a continuation, not a comeback. Certainly, its moody meditations are of piece with Damon Albarn's