Damon Albarn

Dr Dee

(Parlophone)

Reviewed by Barry Didcock

It's hard to imagine Gorillaz or even Blur being invited to perform on Andrew Marr's Sunday morning politics show. But opera still counts as high art, so when Damon Albarn turns librettist and composer, it gives him an entree into that rarefied world where you perform to hushed and seated audiences in august venues where they don't sell T-shirts in the foyer – or, in the case of his appearance on Marr's show last June, in the corner of a TV studio with a couple of politicians watching on from a sofa nearby.

Albarn was up early that Sunday to perform a song from Dr Dee, the opera about 16th-century philosopher and politician John Dee, which he was to premiere at the following month's Manchester International Festival. In June and July of this year he will reprise the work at the London Coliseum for the Cultural Olympiad, in collaboration with English National Opera. Ahead of that comes the music from Dr Dee in album form – and a fascinating confection it is.

As well as being adviser to Elizabeth I and (reputedly) one of the architects of the British Empire, Dee was a mathematician and mystic who dabbled in the occult. He believed it possible to commune with angels – you need to know all this to understand the album – and often tried to do so in the company of trickster/medium Edward Kelley, for whom one track is named.

The album was recorded with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and mixed in Albarn's home-from-home, Reykjavik, by Icelander Valgeir Sigursson. Much of it is taken up with scene-setting choral or orchestral pieces, with the occasional spoken word sample or Afro-style drum track. Otherwise lutes, harpsichords and church organs abound. Helpmates include the 16-strong Palace Voices choir; regular Albarn collaborator Tony Allen, once Fela Kuti's drummer; and Malian kora player Mamadou Diabate.

The lead tracks are the four songs Albarn sings – The Dancing King, Apple Carts, Cathedrals and The Marvelous Dream – and their minimal instrumentation foregrounds the deep, characterful side of his voice, something which was only rarely heard in the shouty Blur days. Albarn is a great admirer of Ray Davies, but in his plaintive, earnest Estuary phrasing, the more obvious calling points are David Bowie and Robert Wyatt. Scholarly, quirky, playful and moving, Dr Dee is the sort of project which would appeal to them both, which is as much of a recommendation as you need.