Damon Albarn releases new solo track "The Tower of Montevideo"

14 October 2021, 12:27 | Written by Cerys Kenneally

(News)

(Damon Albarn)

Damon Albarn has delivered new solo song "The Tower of Montevideo" as the latest preview of his upcoming album The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows, which arrives next month.

"The Tower of Montevideo" is the fifth track to be lifted from Albarn's second solo album, following previous singles "Royal Morning Blue", "Particles", "Polaris" and "The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows", and is once again teamed with a Sublime Boulevards - Performance Films video.

According to the video description, the new song is inspired by "Palacio Salvo, an iconic 1920s building in Uruguay", and "explores Albarn’s melancholic wonder at this part of South America, where Rio De La Plata meets the South Atlantic, a place he has described as both “familiar and utterly otherworldly"."

Albarn originally planned to tour the project - which is inspired by the landscapes of Iceland - in May 2020 with an ensemble of orchestra instrumentation, electronics, vocals, and piano, but then the pandemic hit and he had to postpone the live dates. Albarn did perform some of the pieces in May last year as part of Boiler Room's Streaming from Isolation series, but it's now getting an official release.

The title for his new album, which will follow 2014's Everyday Robots, was inspired by John Clare's poem Love and Memory.

"The Tower of Montevideo" is out now. Damon Albarn's The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows album will be released via Transgressive Records on 12 November, and is available to pre-order now.