Eternal British music legend and current mullet-wearer Damon Albarn is currently rolling out his second solo album, The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows, set for release in November. But in NME‘s new interview with Albarn, his two most famous bands inevitably came up.

Albarn completed the solo LP in February, and “since then I’ve been working on carnival-themed music with Gorillaz with a lot of people from west London,” he says “We’re really going back to the spirit of the first record.” Albarn continues, “It’s really exciting and we’ve been really enjoying it. It’s a nice kind of counter-balance to The Nearer The Fountain, really. I’ve definitely needed a dose of something else after I finished that record. Steel pan drums and Casio MT-40s were always going to be a good cure.”

The most recent Gorillaz project, the album-disguised-as-a-singles-collection Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, dropped last year with the promise of Season Two coming soon. Last fall Albarn also teased a movie and a sequel to the group’s 2010 stunner Plastic Beach. It’s unclear whether this carnival-themed Gorillaz music is for any of these projects.

Blur, the band that made Albarn famous in the first place, has not been properly active since 2015, when they released the reunion album The Magic Whip and put on a few revelatory shows, though they did play a few songs together by surprise at Albarn’s Africa Express: The Circus gig in London two years ago. But drummer Dave Rowntree recently hinted that the band was hoping to “get back out there” once progress against coronavirus allowed for it.

Albarn confirms that he’s been in touch with his Blur bandmates: “Well, we did have a chat recently, but we haven’t really progressed further than that. We did have an idea though; I’ve just been a bit busy at the moment obviously. When it happens, I’ll be made up.” He adds, “When it’s wanted, I’ll do it. I don’t want to foist that stuff on anybody unnecessarily.” It’s wanted, man!

The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows is out 11/12 on Transgressive.