Damon Albarn is one of the artists featured on the first record by Slingbaum, a multi-instrumentalist, composer and arranger from Miami, now based in NYC. As you can see above Damon is on one song, titled “Morphine”, together with Bilal and The Internet’s Syd. The album comes with no info whatsoever except the names and is available exclusively in pre-order at www.slingbaum.info (vinyl only, 3 songs, 16 minutes of music, 40$ + shipping = +50$). Out in May 2020.
I’ve done a bit of research to find out who Slingbaum is, so here are some extracts from his interview for Revive Music (2015): My dad is a great musician and he kind of showed me all the early stuff that I know. More than just playing also, he turned me on to a bunch of music that pushed me into the direction that I ended up going into. I started out really interested in a lot of B.B. King, early blues, and jazz. I started out playing classical piano around the same time that I played guitar. Then when I got to high school I really expanded into jazz. I remember having a car in high school that had a CD player and I had one CD, which was the early Savoy sessions of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. I lived in Miami and it was so hot that the CD melted into my car! I listened to nothing but that CD for two to three years. I didn’t want to tell my parents that the CD got stuck in the car. I can still sing every single note on that record to this day. I had a classical background but I got really into the Impressionist music. The two big ones for me were Ravel and Debussy. There’s a lot of beautiful stuff out there, but the music of Debussy and Ravel speaks to a more emotional listener while [maintaining] an incredible virtuosity of musicianship and composition. In terms of my musical experience, I started out the way most people do by starting bands and trying out different genres. I’ve probably played everything to this point. I got into orchestral composing and orchestral arranging pretty hard. I’m doing a bunch of stuff in Miami for that and it’s progressed all the way up to New York. I’m in New York kind of doing the same thing for orchestras and symphonies. I ghostwrite and ghost-compose for a lot musicians. I do a lot for a lot of famous musicians and there’s a lot of stuff I’m not credited for. Here you can listen to Slingbaum’s “Water Games - Ravel Re-imagined” from the compilation “REVIVE Music Presents: Supreme Sonacy (Vol. 1)” (2015)