PREVIEW: Michael Horovitz/Damon Albarn/Graham Coxon/Paul Weller - Bankbusted Nuclear Detergent Blues - new LP

'Bankbusted Nuclear Detergent Blues'
(Jazz Poetry SuperJam #3)
Gearbox Records GB1520 
12” 180gm vinyl LP


Poet Michael Horovitz has teamed up with Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Paul Weller for a pair of Record Store Day releases.


Half a century on from the beginnings of his public and jazz poetry mission with ‘Blues For The Hitchhiking Dead’ et al, Michael Horovitz is as active and inspirational as ever, composing & performing new poetry, songs and music, publishing New Departures anthologies and staging multimedia events. 

On both the LP 'Bankbusted Nuclear Detergent Blues' and the single Ballade Of The Nocturnal Commune / Extra Time Meltdown, Michael is accompanied in the studio by Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Paul Weller. 

The tracks were recorded at Paul Weller’s Black Barn Studio and Damon Albarn’s Studio 13, then mixed at Studio 13. They are released for Record Store Day and prove that musicians and poets go on mixing it up, blowing minds, and conveying ever newer departures to new generations with their dynamic concerted avant-garde soundscapes.

Paul Weller found that: "...It was my absolute pleasure to work in these recordings with Michael. Damon and Graham. I am a big fan of all three of these artists and just to be so free with all the music and ideas was a real buzz. A lot of fun and no egos in the way. Fabulous. The end results are amongst some of the best things I've ever worked on".

Michael Horovitz was delighted that “... Paul & Damon, long-standing comrades of mine on diverse artistic collaborations, in personal and artistic collaborations, were both equally enthusiastic about the prospect of jamming with one another, Graham and myself. They had never played together before. Graham and Paul had dug one another, and Graham is featured on Paul’s recent ‘Sonik Kicks’ album – which also included the text of my ‘Bankbusted Nuclear Detergent Blues’ which Paul had commissioned me to write. So I stretched out in free form rhapsodies with the entire Paul Weller story in mind. When it came to the recording of this, along with my rural songpoem ‘Ballade Of The Nocturnal Commune’, and the more polemical off-cut from Bankbusted, ‘Extra Time Meltdown’, the three of them connected with the verse and each others’ responses to my performance of it with scintillating flights of harmony, dissonance and poetic improvisations, way beyond my fondest hopes of co-warbled woodnotes wild”. 

Damon Albarn & Graham Coxon added "We have adored the whole process of making this record."

Michael Horovitz vocals & anglo-saxophone
Damon Albarn hammond organ and piano
Graham Coxon guitar, drums, soprano and alto saxophone
Paul Weller optigan, guitar, synthesizers, organ

Words by Michael Horovitz
Music by Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon and Paul Weller