First there was cheese, then a brief foray into fizzy drinks, and now ice cream is Blur’s latest food-venture. To coincide with the release of their latest album The Magic Whip, the band are to launch their own brand of ice cream, which will be sold during their forthcoming UK dates.
Created alongside “independent ice cream revolutionaries” the Licktators – who last month celebrated the birth of Princess Charlotte by producing breast-milk ice cream – the new Blur product will be “a dairy vanilla custard ice cream rippled with raspberry sauce”, mirroring that of their new album artwork.
It is not yet known whether the ice cream will be sold alongside the rest of their merchandise at gigs, or from behind the bar. It was road-tested earlier this month when custom ice cream vans appeared across London and will be available at select Co-operative food stores in June.
This is the latest culinary excursion associated with the band. Cheese-maker and Blur bassist Alex James famously declared ”my 40s are about food” and set about achieving his ambitions by launching the short-lived Alex James Presents range from Asda, including cheeses such as cheddar and ketchup and cheddar and salad cream slices. The bassist also submitted an application for the Britpop trademark in October 2013, reportedly with intentions to create a new brand of drink. The application covered a range of flavours such as “non-alcoholic beer”, “sherbet beverages”, “soda water”, “alcohol containing fruit”, “tomato juice”, “cream liqueurs” and “tequila”, among other ingredients, but has yet to materialise.
The Magic Whip is Blur’s first album in 12 years, their sixth No 1 album and first since their 2003 LP Think Tank.
