"[6] He also references Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish name origin, which is from a piece of graffiti Albarn saw spray-painted on a wall in London in 1993.

Albarn gave an interview with Danielle Perry where he talked about the track, and said: "1976 is a long time ago really, there's that realisation that a lot of things have been quite interesting in the way I turned out.

[9] Albarn was the subject of a half-hour episode of The Culture Show broadcast on BBC Two in February 2014, which focused on his previous bands and his current work.

[11] In his track-by-track review for NME, Matthew Horton said: "One for the Blur fans perhaps – "Modern life was sprayed onto a wall in 1993" – but 'Hollow Ponds' is broader than that, building from witchy Radiohead acoustic guitar to a grand peak with a glum trumpet solo and taking in the drought of 1976 and the 21st century "dreams we share on LCDs".

That's a call back to 'Everyday Robots', the dehumanising effects of technology, and the song itself finally resolves into a drone and eerie electronic excursion.

Like someone sticking pins in a map, Albarn revisits several staging posts, all of them full of magic, romance, loss and dislocation, blankly concluding each section with the relevant date on as a beautiful and haunting a song as he’s ever written.