Gorillaz and the smell of India
From Belgrade to Jaipur, between mourning and Indian suggestions: Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett turn thirty years of partnership into a meditative and melodic album
It is 28 November 2022. In a high school in Belgrade, Gorillaz are recording the video for 'Silent Running', the single from the album 'Cracker Island'. That same day, Damon Albarn writes 'Russian Strings', a track that will end up on 'The Ballad of Darren', Blur's ninth album. It is barely Monday. But the day isn't over yet: Jamie Hewlett, co-founder of Gorillaz, who had been to Jaipur, India, and was so impressed that he wanted to go back with him. When Albarn and Hewlett set off, they knew they were facing an experience that would mark them. They lost their respective fathers in ten days. The singer throws the ashes of his into the Ganges, remembering when, as a child, the music of Ravi Shankar, who was loved by his parents, resounded in the house. In India, Albarn finds himself in the shop frequented and loved by George Harrison, in an inevitable entanglement with those Beatles only deepened by his acquaintance with Graham Coxon.
A thirty-year journey to the top
Damon Albarn cannot give in to the easy way out and be influenced by Shankar or Harrison. The eponymous, opening track 'The Mountain' originates when the singer is visiting Fort Amber. At one point, he comes across a street performer playing on a monotonous instrument. He films it and over the next few days Albarn plays on the recorded melody, infusing the idea with his melancholic vision, then adding Dennis Hopper's voice and the style of Indian musicians. Of course, Gorillaz's ninth album also features a dense list of collaborations. Among the most prominent are Johnny Marr and Anoushka Shankar, confirming the 'attuned diversity' that has characterised Albarn and Hewlett's partnership since its inception. They met in 1990 through Coxon, but planned to form Gorillaz by watching MTV in the flat they shared in Westbourne Grove at the end of the decade. At the time, the two were in the throes of a profound artistic and personal crisis; thirty years later, they find themselves projecting profound reflections on the image of the mountain about the meaning of life, the relationship with death, and the efforts we make on our journey to the summit.
A meditative, deep and shadowy album
Having shaken off the digital dance vibe of 'The Moon Cave' and 'The Happy Dictator', the album takes time for a farewell to Tony Allen in 'The Hardest Thing' to give way to the bittersweet whistling of 'Orange County'. The hallucinatory "The God of Lying" drags us into the stream of discouraging news that we now shake off on a daily basis, while "The Empty Dream Machine" dips into nostalgia setting the stage for the cultural crossroads "The Manifesto". "The Plastic Guru", sung somewhat a la Julian Casablancas, takes us back to the Gorillaz of a few years ago, "Delirium" to the psalmody of Mark E. Smith, one of the absent presences on the record, full of recordings ripped from studio sessions and conversations with great artists who have collaborated with Albarn in the past. 'Damascus' sets the course for Omar Souleyman's electrified dabka and 'The Shadowy Light' ferries us to 'Casablanca', steeped in the greyness of The Good, the Bad and the Queen. The subdued crooning of "The Sweet Prince" flows into the concluding "The Sad God", built on concentric circles that stretch to Sufism, amidst the suggestions channelled by Albarn in his lyrics.
