AFTER creating cartoon pop group Gorillaz and making the Monkey fables into an opera, it seems obvious that Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett should release an album to coincide with the ident sequences they've put together for the BBC's Olympics coverage.

But this album is not a soundtrack to the opera which premiered at Manchester Internat-ional Festival last year, or is it a compendium of music extended from the Olympics inserts. It's based on the same stories that inspired the opera and its lyrics are performed in Mandarin, so don't expect Blur in Cantonese.

Every so often a flavour of Gorillaz or The Good The Bad & The Queen seeps through, but for the most part this pushes the boundaries of both pop music and opera into a world entirely of the creators' making.