Blur - "Out of time"

"Out of time" was Blur's first release for three years, but more importantly the band's first release without guitarist Graham Coxon. It was the lead single from their seventh album Think Tank.

The song is a bass-driven ballad with minimal drums and only acoustic guitar, inspired by the time the band spent in Morocco. The strings are Moroccan Andalucian strings (as opposed to Spanish ones). Damon Albarn (vocals) : "They’re from the Berber tradition, which has very strong connections with the Moorish tradition in Southern Spain. We met quite a few people when we were out there. We ended up meeting these musicians who were unbelievably good and we didn’t give them a directive, just sort of set them up and let them get on with it and before we even said ‘here’s where it starts and it ends’, they’d done this pass. Which was partially them just tuning up, just warming up and playing little passages that didn’t appear when they were doing it. When we played back, it was all virtually in place, we had to do a very little bit of shifting and it was a magical moment".

The British newspaper NME said the song was about the departing guitarist. Alex James (bass) indirectly answers : "It was done quite early on in the proceedings and it was more or less the first batch of recordings we did".

The song was accompanied by an anti-war music video, directed by John Hardwick, depicting life aboard a United States aircraft carrier. Director John Hardwick : "Like the song, the video is a tender piece of work about distance and loss. It aims to distil the song's beauty into a new and unexpected place".

Available on the album that was almost called "Darklife" (reference to a previous album called "Parklife") but is actually called "Think Tank"