PROFILE GORILLAZ
Seven years after their last full-scale release, cartoon rockers Gorillaz are back with a new album, a host of fresh collaborators and the latest cutting edge visual technology. Music Week goes back to the drawing board…
THE PLANET RETURN TO
OF THE
TALENT BY MARK SUTHERLAND
A
ripple of pure excitement spreads out through the Friday night Printworks crowd. To be honest, everyone here was already pretty thrilled when they arrived, ready to see the return of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s much-loved Gorillaz project. That eagerness has been growing with each track performed, as a succession of special guests – ranging from Graham Coxon to Pusha T – has come on stage, transforming a potentially tricky full run-through of a new record no one’s actually heard yet into a cavalcade of memorable collaborations. The real were-you-there moment is happening now though. If it wasn’t exciting enough to see Savages’ Jehnny Beth stride out for We Got The Power, there’s synth legend Jean-Michel Jarre on keyboards in the corner of the stage. But the real reason for the crowd’s spontaneous eruption of enthusiasm is adopting an unassuming position behind Albarn. Can it be? Yes, that’s Blur’s one-time sworn enemy, former Oasis kingpin Noel Gallagher, playing guitar and grinning away, clearly having the time of his life. “Who’d have thought many years back that Damon and Noel would be on the same stage and playing on a record together?” ponders Miles Leonard, chairman of Gorillaz’s label Parlophone, which released the band’s so-long-awaited-most-people-thought-it- would-never-happen fifth album, Humanz, on Friday. “It was a real special moment.”
And the sort of moment that only Gorillaz can bring you. What was once a slightly-derided Albarn
18 MAY 01 APES Gorillaz: Hey hey, we’re the monkeys
side-project has mutated, over almost two decades, into music’s most fertile hotbed of cooperative creativity. And now Humanz is about to take that spirit to the next level.
“We thought we’d extend the concept into everything we do,” says Eleven Management’s Niamh Byrne, who manages the band with Régine Moylett. “It started off being about music but we’ve extended that philosophy across the board by collaborating with people to do all the things we’re doing.” And the things they’re doing will boggle your brain. Most bands only have to worry about showing up and writing some songs. Gorillaz have to do that, marshal
an array of collaborators and featured artists (all of whom are given much more creative freedom than the standard “rap eight bars here please”), craft a range of stunning cartoon visuals and push the technological envelope so far that they’ve been banned from the stationery cupboard for life.
Let’s deal with the music first, as that will make your head hurt less. It features some of Albarn’s most unabashed party tunes in a long, long time and a castlist of both classic and cutting-edge guests, from Mavis Staples (Let Me Out) to Danny Brown (Submission). Featured artists may have become near-compulsory since Gorillaz last graced the charts, but these match-ups were absolutely not conceived in a marketing meeting.
There’s an ape for that: Gorillaz’s app in action
“We’re in an environment where features are on every track these days, but it’s not necessarily for the most natural reasons,” says Leonard. “It’s quite the opposite for these. The passion from artists to want to be involved with Gorillaz is as strong as it’s ever been.” So the music is, as ever, ace. But, also as ever, that’s only one third of the story with Gorillaz. The visual concept – driven by Tank Girl creator Hewlett – has been in development since the end of 2015 and receives every bit as much forensic attention as the music. And then – and here comes the head-spinning
MUSIC Week
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
