Nobody stops him Damon Albarn from finding your next music port. Don’t dwell on it, but explore it. He didn’t get attached to the country sound like the Gallagher brothers, he wasn’t as witty and mischievous as Jarvis Cocker, and yet Blur they worked in the 90s as Britpop’s most effective constant. Alas, of course, if he stayed there. His artistic interests were directed to their supergroup along the way. The good, the bad and the queen but before that, and long before the music industry milked everything they could out of holograms, he did with Jamie Hewlett a group whose members don’t exist because they’re just cartoons: their Gorillaz.

Visiting the Gorillaverse is like visiting a “fantastic universe” where the boundaries of the characters are defined by the imagination of their creator. However, in 2023, he finds Gorillaz in “Cracker Island” what is the name of their eighth album. An island invented by Albarn to comment on technology and social media (hence “Tired Power Man” on the third track of the album). This is where heresy is born, which builds “heaven” in which the truth sounds autotune.

In the real world, the Brit chose him Los Angeles to create this disc. “I used to go to Los Angeles often to discuss what we were working on at Netflix,” he says, referring to the Gorillaz animated film that was being worked on on the platform — and as we learned a few days ago, it was the final eventually written off as a project.

There were a lot of meetings, as well as breaks between them, so Albarn said that we need to use them to the maximum. write music. If you include all of his schemes as well as his solo work, this is something he never stops doing.

Not that he had a particular love for the “City of Angels”. On the contrary, as the mastermind behind Gorillaz admits, “I’ve always been very reluctant about anything Californian.” Sure, over the years he came to Los Angeles to play, but he never felt the curiosity to explore the life of the city. “I was in my hotel. I wasn’t driving during these visits, so it was almost impossible to explore anything,” he says.

Of course, when the opportunity presented itself to be back in Los Angeles, in a more independent state, he gave the city a chance and tried to see from a different perspective areas that he had only heard about before. And then a miracle happened: “It was like a veil was lifted and I suddenly saw Los Angeles in a completely different way.” explains the musician.

It didn’t take long for the front-line producer to find his way Greg Kerstin which provided him with the essentials: “He directly gave me a fantastic collection of synths and an amazing studio. And we started writing music very quickly.” Literally quickly, since writing the album was a matter of several days: “We did all this in a little less than a week. And it wasn’t even a whole week, it was three sessions. Not much time, but since we found them really good, they were very easy to make quickly,” explains O. 2D from Gorillaz.

And Cracker Island happened. Although it took some time from the creation of the record before it reached our ears. The reason was none other than… a patatrack created in the vinyl production back in late 2021, when Adele’s long-awaited 30 record and its more than half a million vinyl pressings affected the production as a whole and pushed the cut-down vinyl to other releases. But it was impossible to release Gorillaz without a printed version because, as Albarn mentions in “K”, the physical aspects of what they do and the artwork is very important. “People religiously collect everything that Jamie does. [Χιούλετ]”, he says, referring to the series’ visual creator.

That’s what happens with most Gorillaz songs: they constantly flirt with a banal sound, but end up being banal. songs written with enough care to make it feel like they’ve always been “there” – and that Albarn was just the one who gave them a retro-futuristic veneer.

The same thing happens when you listen to “Cracker Island” tracks in succession. Essentially the eighth work of Gorillaz collects all its trademarks – playing between pop genres, with the blessing of many musical guests, that is – in a more coherent narrative than in their previous recent work.

Against the background of Cracker Island, of course, there is always California, as you will see in the video clip of the song of the same name and its “Quiet Run” where is the sign Hollywood constantly hidden behind the action. After all, “in the end, all the songs turned out to be layers of Californian utopia,” their creator will say. According to Damon Albarn, “California is the birthplace of modern utopias” with all the ensuing consequences. But at the same time, an ideal place for “meditation” over chaos.

In this musical “ordering” of chaos we find it thunder cat sing in a delightful falsetto for the “eternal cult” of the opening track. Their Tame the impala (“New Gold”), because anyone who wants to touch psychedelia today calls him to his recording. Kevin Parker -and what better way to have him in front of him Bootie Brown from Farkid. But also a superstar bad rabbit for several reggaeton vibes (“Tormento”), Andelaai Omotayo for his vocal contributions to the absolutely radio-friendly “Silent Running” and Beck close the curtain with the ballad ‘Possession Island’.

Oh and her Stevie Nicks. We hear her snarl amid the wall of synths on “Oil,” but more than anything, Albarn listens to her almost in awe, as evidenced by his admiration for the now-only lady and the legendary Fleetwood Mac band.

“How to do it? I would like to know, he says. “the versatility of Fleetwood Mac songs” with a flare that anyone but Damon Albarn would have, and he’d count three and put decades on things. He will give an interesting description of the democracy that reigned in the ranks of the group, before inevitably referring to its recent demise. Christine McVie about which he bitterly says, “I had not seen her for several years and did not expect that I would never see her again.”

But the project also retained “all the energy that was in the hall” and given to us by the long-suffering “Gossip” enough to make your record Fleetwood Mac one of his three favorites, as Albarn reveals without thinking too long.

And from the 70s, the track listing of “Cracker Island” supposedly takes us with him to the present day. Bad rabbit. The participation that the 54-year-old man owes to his daughter, about whom, by the way, we learn that she speaks fluent Spanish: “She always liked reggaeton, so it was she who“ raised ”me in this part,” the father admits. Albarn, who unequivocally called the album the most successful Spanish-speaking star.

The musician returns to the concept of the island again and again. Started a theme for him Jonathan Swift, who, in Gulliver’s Travels, invented Laputa, a flying, diamond island, the inhabitants of which move by means of magnetism and from which the king of the story commands the earthlings. However, “Cracker Island” in this case is the place where you will find plastic beaches as imagined by its creator. Something that instinctively takes us back to 2010 and the Gorillaz album. “Plastic Beach”

Back on the island of my origin Britannia, Damon Albarn finds neither utopia nor heaven. On the contrary, “it seems that this is an island that no one needs anymore, and it is very sad.” That is why, among the existing islands, he will choose it Iceland, which gives him hope.

Whatever imaginary or real landmark the musician has chosen so far, he has devoted every moment of his life to music. From “Kings of the Wild Frontier” from Adam and the ants and a little later – “Battle Rock” from queen, which were the first records she bought as a slightly more distant project that she has in the works and will touch her world opera -and let’s not forget their reunion tour Blur.

If he has learned anything, it is: “The best way to write a song is not to overdo it.”

Something else: “The last layer in things is the layer of truth. Is not it;” Damon Albarn asks almost rhetorically.

In fact, as we hear him say in “Ownership Island” before saying goodbye to us in “Cracker Island”, in this last layer he “Where things don’t exist and we’re all together, to the end.” Indeed.

The interview was provided exclusively by Greece and “K” by Warner, which produces “Cracker Island” by Gorillaz.