David Rowntree (b. May 8 1964) is an English musician, animator and politician from Essex, England best known as the drummer for English rock band Blur.
Role in Gorillaz[]
Rowntree contributes uncredited additional drums to several songs on Gorillaz’ self titled debut album, especially Punk. He can be seen in quick cameos in the 2008 Gorillaz documentary Bananaz. Gorillaz’ original live drummer Cass Browne has said on Hallelujah Monkeyz that most of the self-titled tracks originally had Dave’s drums on them and they were sampled and cut up by Dan The Automator.
Career[]
Graham Coxon and Rowntree played in several bands together while growing up in Essex before Coxon introduced him to Albarn in 1989 and they eventually played together in Blur. After the inclusion of Alex James to their lineup and changing their name a couple of times, the band officially became Blur and they were signed to EMI’s Food Records.
Rowntree is also an animator and once created his own animated series for the UK’s Channel 4 called Empire Square in 2004. He has taken an interest in computer graphics and written research papers on the subject. He is also a politician who has been a member of the UK Labour Party in the UK since 2002, and works in law as a solicitor.
Discography[]
With Blur[]
- Leisure (1991)
- Modern Life is Rubbish (1993)
- Parklife (1994)
- The Great Escape (1995)
- Blur (1997)
- 13 (1999)
- Think Tank (2003)
- The Magic Whip (2015)
With Gorillaz[]
Trivia[]
- His animated series Empire Square makes him the second member of Blur to experiment with an animated side project after Albarn formed Gorillaz in ‘98. Coxon is the third, releasing motion comics for his graphic novel Superstate in 2021.
- He became controversial for his role in Blur’s 2003 interview with music journalist Nardwuar The Human Serviette, in which he bullies Nardwuar unprovoked in a fit of rage. He later apologized and claimed that the incident was due to being a cocaine addict at the time. Nardwuar accepted the apology and appears to hold no grudge towards Rowntree.
- In 2018, Rowntree appeared in the music video for a song by Gorillaz collaborators Slaves. This was before Slaves eventually work with Albarn and appear on the Gorillaz web series Song Machine on the episode Momentary Bliss.
- Rowntree is also a computer programmer and originally had computer programming as his career before he joined Blur.