I don’t know if I have ever been so excited, or daunted, by an assignment than my new 6,000-word FLOOD cover story about the past 25 (yes, TWENTY-FIVE!) years of Gorillaz. When my editor Randy Bookasta reached out and asked, “Are you a Gorillaz fan?”… well, he could tell by my response that I was the right woman for this job.
So, I had the delight and honor of chatting in-depth with Gorillaz masterminds Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, along with key collaborators Posdnuos (of De La Soul) and Yukimi Nagano (of Little Dragon), about the cartoon supergroup’s Technicolor career… and about five minutes into my conversation with Albarn, he casually dropped the news that a new Gorillaz album, The Mountain, had just been completed!
That revelation then added a whole new unexpected chapter to what was originally intended to be just a retrospective. This interview was actually the first that either Albarn or Hewlett did about The Mountain — a very special project which at its core is a touching tribute to both their very real, flesh-and-blood friendship and to some other much-missed collaborators who no longer live in the 3D realm.
And along the way, I got some amazing stories about not only the new album’s emotional recording experience in India, but about Albarn and Hewlett’s past as ’90s flatmates in Ladbroke Grove; how one Gorillaz character was inspired by Angus Young; the hilarious (and Dennis Hopper-related!) story of Albarn and Hewlett’s wacky night at the 2006 Grammy Awards; why Posdnuos didn’t have a solo rap on “Feel Good Inc.,” and how Trugoy the Dove came up with his iconic verse; the highs and literally bowel-rumbling lows of the epic Plastic Beach tour; the band’s seven-year hiatus and how “brothers” Albarn and Hewlett are now closer than ever; the eerie prescience of 2017′s Humanz; and how Gorillaz were really prescient in so many ways, basically predicting the future.
And Gorillaz still sound like the future now. Tomorrow comes today, indeed. Read all about Murdoc, 2D, Russel, and Noodle’s past, present, and future misadventures via the link below!
