Dr Dee [CD]

The Blur singer’s muse resembles an uncontrollable minx, following any interesting scent, never mind the logistics and latitude. A concept album about (says Wikipedia) “an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I... devoted to studying alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy”? Sure. It beats sparring with Suede or Oasis, or another day with the Pro-Tools manual.

John Dee liked to take risks too – the good doctor straddled the worlds of science and magic just as they were becoming distinguishable, or as Albarn puts it: “He walked a very fine line between the dark arts and acceptable practice.” So you can see the attraction. But Dr Dee the album – which charts Dee’s progress from brilliant beginnings to outcast poverty and ruin – doesn’t straddle 15 genres as usual; probably just three or four.

Albarn describes the record as “strange pastoral folk” and Blur ballad lovers will thrill to several resembling the likes of 13’s No Distance Left to Run, such as Apple Carts, The Marvelous Dream and Saturn (the last recalling, of all Brit-mavericks, Peter Hammill). However, Temptation Comes in the Afternoon is closer to Klaus Nomi’s madcap opera and, some unkind souls might suggest, The Black Adder (perhaps this should have been released on Ruff Trade).

Of the more obvious genre-straddling tracks (there are 18 in all, since this is the soundtrack to a stage play), Oh Spirit Animate Us straddles pastoral folk and early choral, The Golden Dawn is cinematic like Peter Greenaway, Coronation mixes early choral with samples and Preparation’s thrumming drum pattern is more Mali than Hampton Court.

Albarn has done his research but this is no dry slice of worthy academia; the way the spirit of each style interlocks is brilliant, and he continues to pull memorable melodies out of his (Elizabethan) hat. How Albarn has reached this point from There’s No Other Way, without the use of a time machine, is astounding, and an alchemic feat that John Dee would undoubtedly have approved of.

--Martin Aston

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Dr Dee is 18 tracks of songs and music inspired by the life of John Dee, mathematician, polymath and advisor to Elizabeth I. Described by Albarn as `strange pastoral folk', Dr Dee is a fitting companion to the end of another Elizabethan age. The album combines Albarn's voice with early English choral and instrumentation alongside modern, West African and Renaissance sounds.

Dr Dee was recorded late last year in Albarn's West London studio and also in Salford with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. The album was mixed by Valgeir Sigursson in Reykjavik.