Blur – The Great Escape (Vinyl 2LP)

To celebrate the 21st anniversary of their debut release, Blur’s fourth album The Great Escape has now been remastered from the original tapes by Frank Arkwright (The Smiths, Arcade Fire, New Order, Joy Division), with the remastering overseen by legendary original producer, Stephen Street.

Expanded across two discs, the LP format of The Great Escape remaster is cut on heavyweight 180-gram, audiophile vinyl and housed in a replica of the original sleeve artwork.

The album is in the style of a concept album, that is, most of the songs are linked by a similar theme-loneliness and detachment. Ten of the 15 tracks have a distinct reference to being lonely. Damon Albarn subsequently revealed that most, if not all the songs on The Great Escape were about himself, in some form or another (e.g. “Dan Abnormal” is an anagram for “Damon Albarn”). He later admitted that the album would have made “a great musical.”