Gorillaz
Gorillaz are an English virtual band created by the musician Damon Albarn and the artist Jamie Hewlett in 1998. The band primarily consists of four fictional members: , Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs. Their universe is presented in media such as music videos, interviews, comic strips and short cartoons. Gorillaz's music has featured collaborations with a wide range of musicians and featured artists, with Albarn as the only permanent musical contributor.
With Gorillaz, Albarn departed from the distinct Britpop sound of his band Blur, exploring a variety of musical styles including hip hop, electronic and world music. The band's 2001 debut album, Gorillaz, which features dub, Latin and punk influences, went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in Europe, with sales driven by the success of the lead single, "Clint Eastwood". Their second studio album, Demon Days, went six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the US, and spawned the successful lead single "Feel Good Inc.", along with other hits such as "DARE", "Dirty Harry" and "El Mañana". The band's third album, Plastic Beach, featured environmentalist themes, synth-pop elements and an expanded roster of featured artists such as Bobby Womack, Lou Reed and Little Dragon. Their fourth album, The Fall, was recorded on the road during the Escape to Plastic Beach Tour and released on 25 December 2010.
In 2015, after over 10 years providing the voice of Russel, Remi Kabaka Jr became a permanent music producer for the band. Their fifth album, Humanz was the band's first in seven years and featured a wide array of guest artists, while its follow-up, The Now Now, focused musically on Albarn. In 2020 Gorillaz started the Song Machine project, a music-based web series with episodes that consisted of standalone singles and accompanying music videos featuring different guests, which culminated with their seventh studio album, Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez. The band's eighth studio album, Cracker Island, met generally positive reviews as a refinement of their usual style.
Gorillaz has presented itself live in a variety of different ways throughout its history, such as hiding the touring band from the audience's view in the early years of the project, projecting animated band members on stage via computer graphics and, since 2010, traditional live touring featuring a fully visible live band. They have won a Grammy Award, two MTV Video Music Awards, an NME Award and four MTV Europe Music Awards. They have also been nominated for 11 Brit Awards and won Best British Group at the 2018 Brit Awards.
History
Creation and ''Gorillaz'' (1998–2002)
The musician Damon Albarn and the comic artist Jamie Hewlett met in 1990 when guitarist Graham Coxon, a fan of Hewlett's work, asked him to interview Blur, which Albarn and Coxon had recently formed. The interview was published in Deadline, home of Hewlett's comic strip Tank Girl. Hewlett initially thought Albarn was "arsey, a wanker". Though Hewlett became acquaintances with the band, he and Albarn often clashed, especially after Hewlett began seeing Coxon's former girlfriend, Jane Oliver. Despite this, Albarn and Hewlett started sharing a flat on Westbourne Grove in London in 1997. Hewlett had recently broken up with Oliver and Albarn was at the end of his highly publicised relationship with Justine Frischmann of Elastica.The idea to create Gorillaz came about when Albarn and Hewlett were watching MTV. Hewlett said, "If you watch MTV for too long, it's a bit like hell – there's nothing of substance there. So we got this idea for a virtual band, something that would be a comment on that." Albarn said: "This was the beginning of the boy band sort of explosion... and it just felt so manufactured. And we were like, well let's make a manufactured band but make it kind of interesting." The band originally identified themselves as "Gorilla" and the first song they recorded was "Ghost Train", which was later released as a B-side on their single "Rock the House". The band's visual style is thought to have evolved from The 16s, a rejected comic strip Hewlett conceived with the Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin. Although not released under the Gorillaz name, Albarn has said that "one of the first ever Gorillaz tunes" was Blur's 1997 single "On Your Own", which was released for their fifth studio album Blur.
From 1998 to 2000 Albarn recorded Gorillaz' self-titled debut album at his newly opened Studio 13 in London as well as at Geejam Studios in Jamaica. The sessions resulted in the first Gorillaz release, the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released on 27 November 2000. This EP consisted mostly of tracks which later appeared on the album, and it also included the band's first music video for "Tomorrow Comes Today", which introduced the virtual band members for the first time. With Gorillaz, Albarn explored genres he had not explored with Blur, such as hip-hop, dub and Latin music, a process he described as liberating: "One of the reasons I began Gorillaz is I had a lot of rhythms I never thought I could use with Blur. A lot of that stuff never really seemed to manifest itself in the music we made together as Blur."
File:Dan the Automator 2015.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.6|American hip-hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura produced the band's debut album.
Albarn began work on the album by himself, but eventually invited the American hip-hop producer Dan "the Automator" Nakamura. He said: "I called Dan the Automator in after I'd done more than half of it and felt it would benefit from having somebody else's focus. So I just rang him and asked whether he was interested in helping me finish it off." Nakamura and Albarn had recently collaborated on Deltron 3030, the debut album by the hip-hop supergroup of the same name featuring rapper Del the Funky Homosapien and DJ Kid Koala, both of whom Nakamura recruited to assist in finishing Gorillaz material. Del featured on two tracks on the album, including the lead single "Clint Eastwood", while Kid Koala contributed turntables to various tracks. The album featured additional collaborations with Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club, Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club, representing a pattern of collaboration with a wide range of artists which later became a staple of Gorillaz.
Gorillaz was released on 26 March 2001 and was a major commercial success, debuting at No. 3 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 14 on the US Billboard 200, going on to sell over 7 million copies worldwide, powered by the success of the "Clint Eastwood" single. The album was promoted with the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", and "Rock the House", in addition to the previously released "Tomorrow Comes Today", with each single featuring a music video directed by Hewlett starring the virtual members. Hewlett also helmed the design of the band's website, which was presented as an interactive tour of the band's fictional "Kong Studios" home and recording studio, featuring interactive games and explorative elements. Following the release of the album, the band embarked on a brief tour of Europe, Japan and the United States to support the album in which a touring band featuring Albarn played completely obscured behind a giant screen on which Hewlett's accompanying visuals were projected. The virtual band member's voice actors were also present at some shows and spoke live to the audience to give the impression that the fictional band was present on stage. In later interviews, Albarn described the band's first tour as difficult due to the limitations imposed by the band playing behind a screen: "For someone who had just spent the last ten years out front being a frontman , it was a really weird experience. And I have to say, some nights I just wanted to get a knife and just cut and stick my head through." The album was followed by the B-sides compilation G-Sides released in December 2001.
On 7 December 2001 the band released the single "911", a collaboration with the hip-hop group D12 and the singer Terry Hall of the Specials about the September 11 attacks. At the 2002 Brit Awards the virtual members of Gorillaz "performed" for the first time, appearing in 3D animation on four large screens along with rap accompaniment by Phi Life Cypher, a production which reportedly cost £300,000 to create. The band were nominated for four Brit Awards, including Best British Group, Best British Album and British Breakthrough Act, but did not win any awards.
On 1 July 2002 a remix album titled Laika Come Home was released, containing most of the tracks from Gorillaz remixed in dub and reggae style by the DJ group Spacemonkeyz. On 18 November 2002 the band released the DVD Phase One: Celebrity Take Down, which contained all of the band's released visual content up to that point along with other extras. After the success of the debut album, Albarn and Hewlett briefly explored the possibility of creating a Gorillaz theatrical film, but Hewlett claimed the duo later lost interest: "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, fuck it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves."
''Demon Days'' (2005–2006)
Albarn spent the majority of 2003 on tour with Blur in support of their newly released album Think Tank; however, upon completion of the tour, he decided to return to Gorillaz, reuniting with Hewlett to prepare for a second album. Hewlett explained that the duo chose to continue Gorillaz to prove that the project was not "a gimmick": "If you do it again, it's no longer a gimmick, and if it works then we've proved a point." The resulting album Demon Days, released on 11 May 2005, was another major commercial success, debuting at No. 1 on the UK Albums Charts and No. 6 on the US Billboard 200, and has since gone six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the United States, and triple platinum in Australia, outperforming sales of the first album and becoming the band's most successful album to date. The album's success was partially driven by the success of the lead single "Feel Good Inc." featuring the hip-hop group De La Soul, which topped Billboard's Alternative Songs chart in the US for eight consecutive weeks and was featured in a commercial for Apple's iPod. The album was also supported by the later singles "Dare", "Dirty Harry", and the double A-side "Kids with Guns" / "El Mañana".Demon Days found the band taking a darker tone, partially influenced by a train journey Albarn had taken with his family through impoverished rural China. Albarn described the album as a concept album: "The whole album kind of tells the story of the night — staying up during the night — but it's also an allegory. It's what we're living in basically, the world in a state of night." Believing that the album needed "a slightly different approach" compared to the first album, Albarn enlisted American producer Brian Burton, better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, to produce the album, whom Albarn praised as "one of the best young producers in the world" after hearing his 2004 mashup album The Grey Album. Burton felt he and Albarn had a high degree of affinity with each other, stating in an interview on the creation of the album: "We never had any arguments. We even have that finish-each-other's-sentences thing happening. There are a lot of the same influences between us, like Ennio Morricone and psychedelic pop-rock, but he has 10 years on me, so I have some catching up to do. Where he can school me on new wave and punk of the late '70s/early '80s, I can school him on a lot of hip-hop. We're very competitive and pushed each other." Similar to the first album, Demon Days features collaborations with several different artists, including Bootie Brown, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, MF Doom and Martina Topley-Bird, among others.
File:De La Soul Demon Days Live.jpg|thumb|left|The band performed in silhouette during the Demon Days Live performances. The band chose to forgo traditional live touring in support of Demon Days, instead limiting live performance during the album cycle to a five night residency in November 2005 at the Manchester Opera House billed as Demon Days Live. The concerts saw the band performing the album in full each night with most featured artists from the album present. Unlike the debut album's tour, the touring band was visible on stage in view of the audience but obscured by lighting in such a way that only their silhouettes were visible, with a screen above the band displaying Hewlett's visuals alongside each song. The residency was later repeated in April 2006 at New York City's Apollo Theater and the Manchester performances were later released on DVD as Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House. As part of their promotion of the album in Latin America, the band was interviewed in September 2005 on the live-action Mexican show Rebelde. This episode also included the Latin American premiere of the music video for "Dare".
The virtual Gorillaz members "performed" at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2005 and again at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2006, appearing to perform on stage via Musion Eyeliner technology. Albarn later expressed disappointment at the execution of the performance, citing the low volume level required so as to not disturb the technology: "That was tough... They started and it was so quiet cause they've got this piece of film that you've got to pull over the stage so any bass frequencies would just mess up the illusion completely." At the Grammys, the band won Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Feel Good Inc.", which was also nominated for Record of the Year. Albarn and Hewlett explored the idea of producing a full "live holographic tour" featuring the virtual Gorillaz appearing on stage with Musion Eyeliner technology after the Grammys performance, but the tour was ultimately never realised due to the tremendous expense and logistical issues that would have resulted.
In October 2006 the band released the book Rise of the Ogre. Presented as an autobiography of the band ostensibly written by the fictional members and expanding on the band's fictional backstory and universe, the book was actually written by official Gorillaz script writer and live drummer Cass Browne and featured new artwork by Hewlett. Later the same month, the band released another DVD, Phase Two: Slowboat to Hades, compiling much of the band's visual content from the album cycle. A second B-sides compilation, D-Sides was released in November 2007, featuring B-sides and remixes associated with Demon Days as well as unreleased tracks from the sessions for the album. In 2008 the documentary film Bananaz was released. Directed by Ceri Levy, it documents the behind-the-scenes history of the band from 2000 to 2006.