Damon Albarn

If you don't see something as a career but as an important part of your life, you don't know how you're going to feel about it.

The things that make me happy most are my family and working.

I'm not really one of those people who believes that if you're a musician you can just leave that behind and start getting into politics.

The cartoon is a metaphor really for the fact that it's almost impossible in our celebrity obsessed culture to move around genres and sort of change you ideas, change your face, you know?

More and more, cultural groups are cross-pollinating, and we're getting much more interesting art as a result.

Music is something that should speak for itself, straight from the heart. It took me a long time to understand that.

Trying to write music that's sensitive to 400 years ago takes a bit of madness, as it's such a long stretch of time.

I don't need to be a frontman all the time, and in fact, the older I get, the less of an urge it is inside me to play that role. I've still got it inside me, and I do occasionally allow it out.

No, every album is something like a snapshot. It only shows one moment in time. It shows what we feel and think right at that point in time, nothing more and nothing less.

I spent two years figuring out how I could turn it into something that would satisfy me as a musician but also make some kind of cross-cultural link. I feel that I kind of at least touched on the possibilities of cross-cultural music, but it is a lifetime's work, and I don't profess to be anything other than a novice at it.

It always struck me that Africa was, in a strange way, a futuristic place and had elements and vibes and spirits that were going to inform the future. Africa Express is an attempt to engage that power outside Africa, and for everyone to benefit from it.

Whether people like it or not, China is incredibly important to the future of mankind. For me, this is something that we all need to have intelligent discussions about in America, in Britain, in Europe.