Blur guitarist Graham Coxon has spoken about his latest solo album ‘A+E’ and has said he believes the recording of the album has opened him up to a whole new style of music.

The album, which is the eighth solo release of Coxon’s career, will be released on April 2 and contains 10 tracks in all. The album is the follow-up to his 2009 album ‘The Spinning Top’.

Speaking to NME about the album, Coxon revealed that he has another 10 songs recorded, but does not want to release them as he feels it would be a “backward step”.

Asked about how many songs he recorded for ‘A+E’, the guitarist replied: “Well I recorded 22 songs, and ‘A+E’ was 10 of those. If I’d done these 10, it’d be a couple of months. Quite quick. Two of the 22 were rubbish, so really there’s another 10.”

Then asked what was likely to happen to those songs, he said: “They’re just sitting there. They’re not like ‘A+E’. ‘A+E’ was a particular pile of songs, and the other songs went into another pile. They’re more what you’d associate with Graham Coxon I guess. Mid-80s, indie, Velvet Underground-influenced, Scott Walker-y, soulful, filmic.”

Then asked if those tracks would ever be released, he replied: “I don’t think so. It might be backward step. If it feels good to put them out, maybe I will, but with ‘A+E’ I feel like I’ve opened another door and I want to have a look through it. I love some of the songs. I don’t think they can be dressed up differently either.”

The guitarist then went onto detail his reasons for not releasing the tracks and spoke about the recording of Blur‘s single ‘Coffee & TV’ by way of comparison.

He said: “I think songs develop like photographs, to the point where they’re so developed they can’t be changed. I was thinking about the guitar solo to ‘Coffee & TV’ actually. I just put something there because we wanted to fill a gap, and said ‘We’ll come back to it’ and the song developed, so we kept it. It’s one of the nicest things about making songs. And that solo, I wasn’t even looking at the guitar, I was just stomping on pedals.”

Graham Coxon will tour in support of ‘A+E’ in April, playing 14 shows across the UK. These begin at Oxford’s O2 Academy on April 13 and run until April 30 when Coxon will headline Falmouth’s Princess Pavilions venue.