Gorillaz may only be a cartoon band at heart but they were absolutely huge on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world a years ago. Then Damon Albarn and his fellow collaborators decided to call it day and go off and do other stuff.

This means we haven’t had a new Gorillaz album since Demon Days was released way back in 2005. But fans of the animated satirical anti-band won’t have to wait much longer for new material, with the third album due for release in 2010.

The source of this unofficial announcement is Albarn’s manager Chris Morrison, who revealed that his client already has around two album’s worth of material written but is rather busy at the moment with other commitments to fully pledge himself to recording the new album.

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What do you buy the man who has everything? OK, Barack Obama may not have everything but becoming the first ever black President of the United States is sure to have made most of his dreams come true. He’s also got a beautiful wife, and lovely kids. So what to get him?

David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative party opposition to Gordon Brown’s Labour Government, thinks he knows. The New Statesman reports that Cameron gave Obama the gift of British music when the pair met up in July, passing on albums by The Smiths, Radiohead, Gorillaz, and Lily Allen.

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The Blur reunion saga, will they, won’t they, has been almost as long-running and confusing as the Led Zeppelin reunion debacle.

The latest news on Blur comes from former lead singer, Damon Albarn, who has stated that a Blur reunion is very possible, but not for a while.

It was over a year ago when the first rumblings of a thawing in the relationship between the band members became apparent.

The four original band members met up for lunch, and Albarn and Coxon, the two whose relationship fallout was claimed to be the main cause for the break up of the band, were civil to each other.

But then nothing more happened, with Albarn going back to work on his various projects, including Gorillaz, The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, and his rock opera, Monkey. A year then passed with nothing much being said on either side until Albarn claimed that Blur was over. This prompted Graham Coxon to write an incredible rant about the whole thing.

That seemed to be it, with Albarn not wanting to go backwards, and Coxon seemingly annoyed about the whole thing enough to move on. There have been rumors since that Coxon is working with Pete Doherty on either a collaboration or Pete’s solo album.

And so to present day, when Albarn has again brought talk of a reunion back up.

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It’s been almost a year since I last wrote about Blur, mainly because the band doesn’t exist at the moment after going on an indefinite hiatus in 2003. Last October saw the four original members of the band meet up for lunch but that was as far it went, with no hint of a studio return since.

Graham Coxon leaving (or being asked to leave) Blur in 2002 was the start of the end for the band, and since then, they have all gone their separate ways and partaken in various side projects, some successful, others not so. But, there is at least some hope for a reunion taking place at some time in the future, with the band insisting relations within the band remain amicable.

However, maybe the chances of a reunion have lessened in recent days. First of all, Blur front man Damon Albarn seemed to rule out a reunion ever taking place when he declared in an interview with Argentinian newspaper Clarin that “Blur is over”.

And now, Coxon has responded to this declaration in a long and rambling post on the band’s official message board. According to NME, Coxon wrote under his username, tweedo, and posted a stream-of-consciousness style update on his feeling about Blur and the chances of a reunion.

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Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett are the innovators and, dare I say it, geniuses behind the animated satirical anti-band Gorillaz. But while that is their best-known collaboration, with the band having two hugely successful albums, and worldwide fame, both are also famous for other things.

Albarn is of course the former lead singer of Blur, one of the two biggest Britpop bands, alongside Oasis. It may be telling that while Oasis are still going, Blur split long ago, and Albarn has moved on to many other projects. One of which, The Good, The Bad and The Queen, are still going strong.

Jamie Hewlett meanwhile is the co-creator of the legendary comic book, Tank Girl. While Albarn handles all of the music, Hewlett handles the artwork, and has won awards for it. He has also created the opening credits sequence for the BBC’s coverage of the Beijing Olympics.

The last time we saw the pair, they had collaborated on Monkey: Journey To The West, an operatic reworking of an old Chinese tale, which has played in Manchester and is coming to the Royal Opera House in London this week. And now they have announced their next project.

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The fabled Blur reunion that has been rumoured for months now has finally happened, but all it consisted of was a pleasant lunch and nothing more.

The four original Britpop band members met up again on Monday Oct 1st for what has been described as “an enjoyable lunch” but there’s no hint that they will ever get back in to a studio together.

Instead the band issued a statement through their official website explaining “there are currently no other music plans for Blur”.

Well what a huge disappointment that has turned out to be. I was really hopeful of a Blur reunion tour and maybe even some new material, as they were one of my favourite bands of the 90s. Unfortunately it looks like the personal and musical differences may not quite have fully healed up yet.

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Blur are set to record together as a four piece again for the first time since 2002. That was the year guitarist Graham Coxon left the inspirational Britpop band, and decided to do his own thing.

While Coxon and Damon Albarn have had varied success (but success nonetheless) since, there’s been a groundswell of support for some new songs from the band, and it seems it may now be about to happen.

It looks like it is now all up to singer Damon Albarn to put the plans in to action. Coxon told NME.com:-

“Dave, Alex and I are all talking. I talk to Alex the most. But there’s four individuals in the band,” “We’re all really busy, but there’s definitely a week [when we're going to record].”

“I’m just raring to go,” “But anything could happen. An alligator could come out of the Thames and eat the Tate Modern while I’m in it, or a mosquito could come and kill us all.”

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