A project that has the potential to be a great one – or at the very least an interesting one – is the collaboration between Blur/Gorillaz’s Damon Albarn, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, and Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen (who has previously worked with Albarn in The Good, The Bad and The Queen). Collectively they are going by the name Rocketjuice and the Moon, and although talk of the project has been around since 2008, their live debut was just in the Fall of last year. It had fallen a little quiet around this project, leaving us to speculate that it had just been a one-off live experiment that had fallen by the wayside.
However, that is not the case, and details of an album are slowly eking out. The main source of information is this month’s issue of British music magazine Mojo, who have a feature on the band (screen shot over at stadium-arcadium.com). The album is set to come out on March 12th (in the UK, US date forthcoming) and features guest spots from Erykah Badu, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (returning to work with Albarn again having featured on Gorillaz Plastic Beach and several African musicians and rappers. The album was recorded mostly in London with a few parts done in Chicago, Paris and Berlin.
Across the album’s 18 tracks we can expect to hear “all funk… goove music, music that makes you dance,” according to Allen. I guess that’s nothing less than you’d expect from an Afrobeat musician, one of the world’s most talented bassists and a man who seems to be able to mold himself into any musical guise. Let’s hope we get to hear something from it soon!
[via CoS]
