If you’ve had an ear to the ground, you’ll have likely known for a while that this was on the cards. Damon Albarn has migrated away from Blur machinations for the time being and now Jamie Hewlett has revealed that, yes, a new Gorillaz album is currently in the works, slated to come out some time next year. Gorillaz has been one of the most fascinating musical projects of the 21st century. It’s been a wondrous exploration into the potential of the ‘virtual band’, a place for Albarn to pursue all of his most weird and wonderful production experiments and every full studio album has blown the world apart, in some way or another. If those alone weren’t reasons enough to get ridiculously giddy about the prospect of a new one, I’ve got 5 more. Brace yourselves, it’s coming up…
5. The Narrative
No Gorillaz release has ever failed to address the fact that the band members themselves are, in fact, fictional. Sorry to ruin that for you. The ‘virtual band’ model is so much more than a gimmick though. Every album has contained an additional layer of material, extending out an ongoing, and rather fascinating narrative concerning the 4 members. Russel was, until recently, a vessel for the ghoulish remnant of a dead rapper, for instance. 2D is effectively mindless, despite being the front-man, Noodle was thought dead after her flying windmill island was attacked by gunships, prompting her to be briefly replaced by a cyborg double and I don’t even know where to begin with Murdoc. Let’s put it this way – Plastic Beach only came about because he kidnapped them all and forced them to help him make it.
That’s a very condensed version of a much richer history which has grown through every release, press appearance, video and anything else related to the band that’s come out since 2000. It’s as interesting as any comic that’s been released under Hewlett’s name, even Tank Girl and the sprawling way in which the narrative has unfolded over the years has been a bizarre masterclass in how to market a band that doesn’t actually exist. The last time we saw them was in the 2011 video for ‘Do Ya Thing’, which had the group living in a ramshackle flat in London, inexplicably rooming with their former nemesis, The Boogieman, and facing eviction.
4. The Variety
While there is a lot of similarity between the interim ‘Sides’ cuts, the full studio albums are so remarkably distinct you almost forget that they’re from the same group. Gorillaz was a dark, haunting affair with the odd foray into upbeat hip-hop territory. Demon Days was almost schizophrenic in the way it jumped between soulful rises and dissonant, noisy drops and Plastic Beach was a ludicrous, hallucinatory foray into an underwater wonderland of disco, funk and neo-soul.
It has been almost impossible to predict what direction the band will go in next and this is no exception. Damon Albarn is not the kind of musician who ever sits still. Once he’s tried out an idea, he’s halfway to the next one before the dust has even settled and Gorillaz, as a project, has acted as a proving ground for every new concept that has emerged from his enviable brain. I have some ideas about what direction it might head in but honestly even if I turned out to be right, guessing is completely futile, it’s better to just sit back and trust that it’s going to be amazing.
3. The Live Shows
I’ve never seen Gorillaz live and that makes me very, very sad. In much the same way that every new album is its own entity, it’s an excuse for Albarn, Hewlett and their team to find new ways to push the envelope in terms of what they can do on stage. The live band itself has cycled through various members as the years have gone by but the vibe has never been the same twice.
Initially they performed behind a projected screen with Hewlett’s artwork appearing on it. Later, when Demon Days had come out, they actually had fully 3D projected versions of the band members on stage, acting along to the performing as if it was actually them doing it. When it came time for Plastic Beach, and their subsequent world tour, they eschewed the veneer entirely and just performed as musicians, making sure to bring along as many of the armada of featured artists who appeared on the album as they could. It was only recently that Albarn was able to perform their debut single, ‘Clint Eastwood’, with rapper Del the Funky Homosapien actually with him on stage and there are plenty of tracks left over that have yet to be fully and accurately performed on stage.
2. The Collaborators
I once heard Damon Albarn described as something of a musical butterfly collector. I’d say that’s a pretty fair assessment. With each passing Gorillaz release, more and more featured artists have been amassed to play on each track, prominent or otherwise and in some cases those appearances have helped them soar to wider acclaim. I’m eternally grateful to Albarn for inviting Little Dragon to appear on two tracks from Plastic Beach, as they’ve since become one of my favourite bands. On the opposite end of the spectrum, already well-known artists always feel like so much more than a passing nod or brag.
Shaun Ryder’s mispronounced vocal on ‘Dare’ is the stuff of legend, Lou Reed’s gorgeous singing on ‘Some Kind of Nature’ never fails to turn my soul to honey and then you have the presence of elements like the Lebanese National Orchestra, The Hypnotic Brass Band and in particular the San Fernando Valley Youth Chorus, who provide the choral vocals for ‘Dirty Harry’. Personally though, I love the fact that both Demon Days and Plastic Beach can boast better compliments of guest rappers than most Def Jam compilations. Where else are you going to hear MF Doom, Bootie Brown (from The Pharcyde), De La Soul and Roots Manuva within 1 or 2 tracks of each other, only to then be treated to a spoken word contribution from Dennis Hopper? It’s completely insane the sheer variety of outside contributors pulled it with each new Gorillaz release and once again, there’s no way to predict who will turn up this time around.
1. The Finality
This might seem obvious, but it needs to be addressed – there has not been a bad Gorillaz album. That’s not to say that the project will be able to continue exponentially without declining, in fact, I’d say that after this new release the loveable band of creepy cartoon oddities might bid their final farewell. If this is to be their swan-song, it’s all the more reason to remain confident. All good things must come to an end and given that the interim between each new release has been rife with turbulence (Albarn and Hewlett had some kind of major falling out not long after Plastic Beach dropped) which threatened to derail the whole thing.
Both artists have other projects to attend to and neither one is the type to drag something out beyond its logical conclusion. As much as every new cut has blossomed with new ideas, the star that shines twice as bright burns half as long. The prospect of Albarn and Hewlett treating this as the last Gorillaz project is a bittersweet one, if that indeed turns out to be the case, but the fact that they might not intend to ever revisit it after this just means that they’ll be even more eager to make it incredible. If you put a gun to my head, I would scream a lot, but once you explained that you would shoot me if I didn’t pick the album I thought was best, I’d say it was Plastic Beach.
Truth be told though they’re all so unique that they can’t even be judged against each other, they all live in very different worlds and compliment each other accordingly. All my preference for the most recent album really shows is that they’ve been getting better with time. That’s largely down to the development of the relationship between Hewlett and Albarn from mere creative collaborators to a force to be reckoned with, Monkey was evidence enough of that by itself. I might be wrong, we might get more material after this, but either way, this is going to be something very special.
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