“I didn’t want to do the obvious thing,” says Dave Rowntree, the musician best known as the drummer in Blur.

“It was less clear to me what the obvious thing was.”

Rowntree is discussing Radio Songs, his debut solo album released at the age of 58.

Rowntree has had a prolific career both inside the Colchester band Blur and outside as a film and TV composer, Labour councillor and light aircraft pilot, but is only now releasing a solo album under his own name.

“Obviously, having some kind of drum album would be the really tediously obvious thing,” he says with a sardonic chuckle.

“But other than that, what would be the obvious thing? You can tie yourself up in knots thinking about that kind of thing.

“People know I’m fairly contrary. Maybe the obvious thing would be to do a contrary album.

Would it blindside people if I did some kind of Britpop album?”

Rowntree did neither of the above.

The ten track LP is an atmospheric, textural collection that brings together electronic and orchestral sounds, finished with an undercurrent of nostalgia and political anger.

Growing up in Colchester, Rowntree went to The Gilberd School and attended the Landermere Music School, Thorpe-le-Soken, at weekends, where he studied percussion.

He played percussion with his father in the Colchester Silver Band and started his career as a computer programmer for Colchester Council before music took over.

Rowntree bonded with his father over their shared love of radios and was transported to foreign countries.

“Radio in the broadest possible sense has always been a constant for me. It was in my family. It was something that my dad and I had in common.

Gazette: Rowntree is discussing Radio Songs, his debut solo album released at the age of 58Rowntree is discussing Radio Songs, his debut solo album released at the age of 58 (Image: Dave Rowntree)

“He used to be a radio engineer in the RAF and he discovered a love of electronics there that he carried with him for his entire life. And he passed that on to me.

“Some dads and sons would go fishing or go to football matches.

“My dad and I sat around the kitchen table with a soldering iron building radios, repairing radio sets and then switching them on, plugging them into an antenna and tuning into stations around the world.”

This fed an ongoing love of electronics and a number of his DIY sound modules are used on the new record.

In fact, there are few real drum sounds on Radio Songs. Rowntree currently does not even have a kit in his home studio.

Taking Radio Songs on tour also means stepping up as frontman.

You might imagine he looked to Blur bandmate Damon Albarn for guidance, but Rowntree found it elsewhere – in his former career as a Labour councillor.

“I’m not fazed at the idea of speaking in front of crowds,” he offers.

“Various other careers I’ve had, I’ve had to do that, and I’m comfortable with it.”

His song Devil’s Island is an ethereal reflection on the 1970s and draws some striking comparisons to today.

He tells me the track is partly a warning to those who pine for the good old days while forgetting the reality of that period.

“My memory of growing up in the 70s was that the UK was a pretty bleak place in those days,” he says.

“There were definitely good things about it, absolutely.

“Some great art was produced and some great music, but for most people’s experience, as I remember it, it was a pretty dire time.

“There was a lot of poverty, strikes, the right wing was in the ascendant and the economy was a basket case.”

He remembers the country feeling “very unsafe”.

“When the Sex Pistols sang about having no future, that’s how people felt.

“A generation grew up thinking the future of the country held nothing for them.”

Rowntree says there has been a welcome return to a more DIY spirit in the last decade.

“It’s now fashionable to do that kind of thing, to be more handson, to spin your own wool and make stuff out of wood, all of which had fallen out of fashion “I feel a kinship for all of that, because making music is less and less like that and more and more like working in an office these days.

“Everything is on the computer. Often if I’m in the studio for a week on my own, I do feel like I’m back working for Colchester Council.”

“Have I really come on this entire journey to be sitting at a desk in front of a computer monitor for a week?

“Music software is like a word processor for music.

“You cut and paste and all of that kind of stuff.

“It really is getting less and less rock and roll being in a band,” he jokes.

For Rowntree, thankfully, the antidote to all this is touring.

“Touring is more exciting for a band like Blur now than it’s ever been,” he says.

“We seem to be getting more and more popular.

“The idea of us playing Wembley Stadium ten years ago would have been laughable.”

Rowntree says the group – him, Albarn, bassist Alex James and guitarist Graham Coxon – met last year for an informal catchup ahead of their two mammoth shows at the 90,000 capacity London venue in July.

“We dipped our toe in the water,” he offers.

“But the actual rehearsals happen in the month or so before the start of the tour.

“We all got back together just as much to kind of have a cup of tea together and chew the fat about anything else, and got the old instruments out and had a play through.

“But the actual rehearsals haven’t started yet.”

n Radio Songs is released on January 20.