Blur’s Damon Albarn has praised producer James Ford who worked on the band’s latest and ninth studio album, The Ballad Of Darren.

The producer also worked on The Car, the latest record from Arctic Monkeys, and Albarn believes his vocal register sounds pretty similar to their frontman Alex Turner on the new album.

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“I think he’s great, I sing a lot like him on the new album,” says Albarn in an interview with German publication Musikexpress (via NME).

“You know our producer James Ford?” he adds. “He also worked with the Arctic Monkeys, I mentioned that to him. But what could I have against that? I love Alex’s voice. I just prefer to sing in a lower register now.”

I had an incredible, surreal time making “Ballad of Darren” with some absolute heroes. Hope you enjoy it. pic.twitter.com/LPP6uo7UOs

— James Ellis Ford (@jamesellisford) July 21, 2023

Albarn also went on to discuss Ford’s impact on The Ballad Of Darren, and praised his work ethic: “James is just super musical and smart, he works very intuitively, he also likes a drink. We have the same sense of humour,” he says.

Earlier this year when speaking of working on The Car, Ford explained why he resist the urge to over tweak: “I try not to do that with other people’s records, not putting things in time and in tune too much because I think that human-ness and that wonkiness is what I love to hear in other people’s records and often gets ironed out in a modern production process,” he said.

“To not do that to yourself is harder – it’s easy to hear someone else’s mistakes and see the value in it, but it’s hard to see the value in your own mistakes a lot of the time.”

Check out The Ballad Of Darren below:

To view all of Blur’s upcoming live dates, check out their official website.

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