Blur have announced that they will release 'The Magic Whip', their first album in 12 years, on April 27.
The band – Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree – made the announcement at press conference hosted by outgoing BBC Radio 1 presenter Zane Lowe at Chinese restaurant The Golden Phoenix in London's West End, which is ongoing at present.
The album's producer, Stephen Street, also attended.
Blur recorded an album's worth of material in five days in Hong Kong in May 2013.
However, in an interview published by NME in July 2014, Damon Albarn said that because he likes to work in shorter, more concentrated periods of time he feared that he would never return to the tracks the band made while in Asia.
"There are about 15 songs we recorded in Hong Kong," he said at the time. "The annoying thing is, if I'd been able to write the lyrics there and then about being there, we'd have finished the record. But sometimes, if you can't do it all at once, it dissipates really and I don't know what I'd sing about now with that record. There's some great tunes on there, but it may just be one of those records that never comes out."

Ghost Stories is the upcoming sixth studio album by British alternative rock band Coldplay. The album, co-produced by the band with returning Mylo Xyloto producers Paul Epworth, Daniel Green, and Rik Simpson, will be released by Parlophone in Friday-release countries on 16 May 2014 and in the United Kingdom on 19 May 2014. The album will also be released by Atlantic Records in North America on 19 May 2014. It is the first full-length release by the band in North America under Atlantic, after Coldplay were transferred from Capitol Records in 2013, following the purchase of EMI and its assets by the Universal Music Group in 2012.