Damon Albarn was born on 23 March 1968 at Whitechapel Hospital in East London. His father was engaged in the development of new furniture models, was familiar with many people from the London psychedelic underground of the late 60s (particularly with the musicians of the band "Soft Machine") and his mother worked as a stage designer. When Damon was ten, his family moved to Colchester. While studying at college, he entered theater courses, and after passing a three-year training program for a year,
more
Damon Albarn was born on 23 March 1968 at Whitechapel Hospital in East London. His father was engaged in the development of new furniture models, was familiar with many people from the London psychedelic underground of the late 60s (particularly with the musicians of the band "Soft Machine") and his mother worked as a stage designer. When Damon was ten, his family moved to Colchester. While studying at college, he entered theater courses, and after passing a three-year training program for a year, he played in amateur productions. At the age of nineteen, Damon went to London, worked in a recording studio, where he tried to record his first musical experiences with three thousand pounds received from his grandfather. He soon met his Colchester college classmate, Graham Coxon, who played guitar and saxophone. The friends decided to form a band, which was joined by bassist Alec James and drummer Dave Rowntree. After changing several names, the band changed their name to Blur, and their first album, Leisure, was released in August 1991. Having not gained any noticeable success at first, the group nevertheless by the mid-90s broke into the first echelon of a new generation of British bands - their albums "Modern Life Is Rubbish" (1993), "Parklife" (1994), "Great Escape" (1995) became classics of the style, called "Britpop". Despite their success, Blur did not exploit their previous achievements, gradually moving towards alternative music and psychedelia (Blur (1997), 13 (1999)). Being the leader of one of the most famous bands of the 90s, Damon nevertheless always found time to implement his own projects - taking the pseudonym Dan Abnormal (anagram of the name Damon Albarn) he took part in the studio work on the debut album of the group "Elastica" (their vocalist Justinie Frishman was Damon's girlfriend for a long time), under the same pseudonym one of his compositions was included in the soundtrack to the film Denny Boyle "Trainspotting". In 1997, for the first time tried himself in the role of a movie actor, starring in the crime drama “Authority” directed by Antonia Byrd. The author of music for several films: “The Eater” (1999, dir. Antonia Byrd), “101 Reykjavik” (2000, dir. Baltazar Kolmakur), “Ordinary criminal” (2000, dir. Tadeusz O’Sullivan). In 2001, under the pseudonym 2-D, he became one of the participants of the musical and virtual project Gorillaz, with whom he recorded the album of the same name, which gained great popularity.