Blur Picture

Blur - Midlife: A Beginner's Guide to Blur (2009)
Britpop/Alternative/Rock | MP3 | CBR 256 kbps | 2 CDs | 01:53:00

Midlife: A Beginner's Guide to Blur is a two-disc compilation album by Blur, released by EMI Records June 15, 2009 (2009-06-15). Designed as a sampler for casual listeners, and with a greater focus on the band's career highlights rather than their hit singles, it is Blur's second retrospective collection, succeeding 2000's Blur: The Best Of and coincides with the band's 2009 reunion performances.

Few albums illustrate the increasing thin line between electronica and rock music at the end of the '90s better than Splendor. North America's most powerful electronica label, Astralwerks, assembled a strong collection of remixes that add an aura of electronica's broad spectrum of possibilities to some rock songs that truly deserve to be described as alternative.

It's ironic – but what isn't ironic, when it comes to Blur, the most ironic band in pop history – that the single that made Brit-pop a phenomenon had almost nothing to do with what followed, apart from maybe Pulp and the renegade band of freaks that Simon Price labeled as Romos. "Girls & Boys" was retro-new wave disco, a post-modern cross of Duran Duran and Chic.

Like its parent film, T2 Trainspotting’s soundtrack eschews cosy Cool Britannia nostalgia for something weirder and better. The original soundtrack was a sharp mix of cult classics and of-the-moment artists. Rather than get Blur and co back, Danny Boyle has called on a more leftfield lineup of young guns, the likes of Mercury-winning Edinburgh alt hip-hop trio Young Fathers, Brixton scuzz rockers Fat White Family and deliciously demented Irish rappers Rubberbandits. The classic side of things is held up by Queen, Run DMC, Blondie and more, with the whole bookended by Trainspotting’s biggest tracks reborn: a mad-dog Prodigy remix of Iggy’s Lust for Life and Underworld’s Slow Slippy. In our retromaniac world, it might not attain the original’s classic status, but it’s all the better for its bravery. (The Guardian)