Co-producer Dan the Automator injects an astral glimmer and rib-shaking bottom end throughout, assisted by Jamaican bass legend Junior Dan, who leads bittersweet dub odysseys “Starshine” and “Slow Country”. Other Albarn identifiers run through the record-the sharpness of melody, the air of melancholy that hangs around even the brightest moments-but he calls on collaborators to help frame them in new, divergent ways. There’s no mistaking the careworn voice carried by rolling hip-hop beats on opener “Re-Hash”. After all, who was a more convincing front for otherworldly adventures in dub, trip-hop, punk, rap Westerns and bolero sounds? A man inexorably tied to Britpop with Union Jack bunting? Or Noodle, 2D, Russel and Murdoc, a motley gang of vaguely apocalyptic animations?Īlbarn originally planned to be an anonymous part of the project, but that was a futile notion by the time this debut album arrived in March 2001.
Retreating behind comic-book creator Hewlett’s animations gave him a new freedom to experiment. Even as Blur’s increasingly intrepid music distanced them from the creeping conservatism of Britpop during the late ’90s, Albarn had creative urges that couldn’t be satisfied within one of Britain’s biggest guitar bands.
However, the concept of a virtual band had another appeal for Blur frontman Albarn: It allowed him to disappear. The traditional origin story says Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett conceived Gorillaz as a comment on the soullessness and artifice of pop at the turn of the millennium.
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