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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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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