Drawing Inspiration
The Big Issue, May 2005
After four years in the pop wilderness following the success of their 2001 debut album, Gorillaz are back. The ultimate manufactured band tell Jim Butler about where they've been, their new eco-conscious album and world domination.
Set deep in the darkest bowels of rural Essex, far removed from the Essex that has crystallised in the public’s imagination - the world of pneumatic blonde stunners and lagered-up lairy city boys - lies the infamous Kong Studios. Set on a hill miles from anywhere, the building, which seems to be permanently shrouded in a foggy darkness reminiscent of Jack The Ripper’s Victorian London, is master of all it surveys.
Legend has it that the site on which today’s mansion stands - built in 1749 by Sir Emerick Khong to fuel his lust for Bacchanalian orgies of every imaginable hue - was originally a druids’ meeting point. Local housewives whisper that in its time, the land has also been used as a cemetery (where many who died in the Great Plague of 1665 were buried); that the building is adjacent to one of the UK's biggest, and most stench-ridden, landfill sites; and that until 1993 the Khong Mansion was home to a bunch of Hell’s Angels who perished in a fire way down in the labyrinthian building’s basement. No one actually seems to know precisely where this ghoulish brick and mortar ode to society's underbelly is situated, leading some naysayers to doubt its existence, but in 2001 asymbolic bunch of technicoloured cartoon misfits emerged kicking and screaming from its haunted lair with the express intention of taking over the music industry. Led by their demonic bass player Murdoc, fronted by the instantly iconic singer 2D, underpinned by their rhythmical man mountain drummer Russel, laced with the preternatural musical genius of their 10-year-old Japanese guitarist Noodle and mates with Blur’s shadowy Damon Albarn, these exquisitely drawn boys (and girl) went by the name Gorillaz. And having announced themselves to an unsuspecting, befuddled and suspicious world - by way of selling six million copies of their eponymous debut - it soon became eerily clear that these two-dimensional freaks were imbued with the spirit of their notorious home.
“I tell you baby,” the booze-sodden Murdoc croaks, “once you're in Kong, you’re in Kong for life! This is a venue that talks to you even if you're abroad. It’s like the Overlook Hotel out of The Shining. A mind of its own.”
Russel concurs: “My companion here does have a point. Something about this place seems... inescapable. The pull is incredible.” “I feel like we've always lived there,” the charmingly infantile 2D adds.
Armed with this frightening knowledge, it was with great trepidation that The Big Issue accepted Gorillaz’s invitation to visit Kong Studios on the occasion of the release of their second album, the magical and symphonic lo-fi, psychedelic hip-hopera Demon Days. Hang on, cartoon bands? Satanic studios? Ten- year-old Japanese guitarists? It’s all a load of pretentious codswallop isn’t it? Perhaps, but why let the facts get in the way of acracking story. After all, it’s more fun than the crushingly dull everyman shtick proffered by such bores as Keane, The Stereophonics et al. Surely no one was left in any doubt that Gorillaz was the innovative brainchild of Damon Albarn and his former flatmate, Tank Girl cartoonist Jamie Hewlett? Less an elaborate ruse, ‘more a diaphanous tickle of pop music’s current fascination with image and spin.
In an age where popular culture - and therefore by proxy some of its more baser elements such as the often noxious world of pop - had become preoccupied with notions of surface, where the stylists and publicists run amok trying to hoodwink us into thinking the sporting of a Ramones t-shirt somehow confers authenticity, and where weekly ritual humiliation on TV qualified glorified club singers and stage school Muppets to popstar status, Gorillaz made, and continue to make, perfect sense. A cartoon band for an increasingly cartoon world. Naturally, Gorillaz weren’t born perfect: at times wacky, at others contrived (live, they are a disappointment), they were saved by Albarn’s innate sense of pop literacy and Hewlett’s fully formed, quasi-Beatles - which one’s your favourite? - characters. And now, four years on, they're back: bigger, badder, better. If Demon Days doesn't confirm Albarn’s standing as this generation’s pre-eminent musical adventurer, usurping even that notable eclectic-savant Beck, then we must be living in rarefied times. So, it’s back to the mysterious Kong Studios ... In 2001 Gorillaz - the lecherous Murdoc notwithstanding - were born bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. If a week is a long time in politics, four years is an eternity in music. Seduced by fame, 2D, Russel, Noodle and to some extent Murdoc have had to do their growing up in public. Only Noodle, still a relative bairn at 13, looks happy with her lot: a new mature, Bijork-like sensibility, radiating a self-possessed wellbeing. On the other hand, 2D, while still impossibly cool in his street urchin Steve Marriot manner, looks in need of a few decent square meals, his complexion pallid and gaunt; Russel appears disturbed, his mind in a constant state of flux; and Murdoc... well, Murdoc seems to be positively possessed, the totally epitome of dishevelled chic.
“What do you mean dishevelled chic,” he spits, his breath reeking. “My look is pure Dr Strange. It's a kinda Victorian Opium-eater meets East End thug with a little Marvin The Magician thrown in. Now that’s a look. Better than walking around all day in a pair of stupid trainers with your trousers down your ankles, looking like you've just soiled yourself. Baseball caps, man. What is that about? Chevy Chase? Kids today just seem to dress like... well... kids! In fact, most adults seem to dress like kids too.”
Quite. But as Noodle astutely noted earlier this year, “Every great band is destroyed by their success. Cartoon bands are no exception.” Buoyed by the inordinate success of their first album, the band went loop-da-loop. A year in Hollywood attempting to make a movie didn’t pan out. And so began an eventful couple of years for the foursome. Murdoc spent 18 months in a Mexican jail for passing dud cheques in a knocking shop (“Reformed character?” he jokes. “Piss off.") before converting to Mexican black magic. 2D hung out with Britt Eckland in LA before decamping back to Blighty and hooking up with Shane Lynch from Boyzone (“Me and him just sort of took Eastbourne over”).
Russel, meanwhile, the gentle giant carrying the soul of his dead rapper friend Del (Tha Funkee Homosapien) was visited by the Grim Reaper who relieved him of his pal, before he was rescued by Ike Turner. Scarred by his ordeal, he began work on the hip hop Pet Sounds. He only succeeded in emulating Brian Wilson and had a breakbeat breakdown. Noodle searched for her past in Japan and discovered her life story was spookily similar to parts of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. “I haven't spoken to Mr Tarantino. Although there is more than one way to tell a martial arts story of revenge and forgotten memory,” she says. Although Murdoc may call himself the de facto squadron leader of Gorillaz, Demon Days is Noodle’s vision. Murdoc might say that the band’s second album is fuelled by a “lust for glory”, but it's Noodle’s more considered thoughts on the album which really shaped its evolution. To wit: “The soul of the recording can’t avoid being a manifestation of the time, climate and location of the place we were in when it was recorded. Consequently, the colours are rich, dark and heavy, while the rhythms are clean, strategic and relentless. It has a consciousness to it.”
Or, somewhat simpler: “The other members of Gorillaz did not return to Kong until it was time for them to play their relevant parts, so I had the building to myself during most of the writing period.” What Noodle has crafted, then, is an album of intricate beauty. Fired by slogans half-inched from self-help fortune cookies (Reject False Icons, Death From Below), Demon Days, implausible as it sounds, is an environmentally conscious world album, as song titles like Every Planet We Reach Is Dead, O Green World, Last Living Souls and Don’t Get Lost In Heaven suggest. Thankfully though, it’s leagues away from Sting’s brand of irksome self-publicity and muso blandness. Produced by hip-hop auteur Dangermouse (the bravura genius behind last year’s The Grey Album, the meshing of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album) and featuring guests such as Shaun Ryder, Roots Manuva, Ike Turner, Dennis Hopper, De La Soul, the London Community Gospel Choir and the San Fernandez Youth Chorus, it’s a vibrant and visceral success. “The first album was more upbeat,” Russel suggests. “And the songs were not necessarily all connected. This album has an arc to it.”
Enthused by what he’s heard, Murdoc begins to boast. “I would settle for the definite realisation that Gorillaz are the kings of all they survey,” he says. “The dons of modern music. Unbeatable. And I want to see it on paper, signed by everyone.”
Seeking our escape from Kong, someone opines that surely a document purporting to that fact is being drawn up as we speak. However, the small matter of returning to civilisation has still to be addressed. Just how does one leave Kong? “Practice mate,” Murdoc laughs sinisterly. “It's the only way to get anywhere.”
Demon Days is released on May 23 (Parlophone).
Set deep in the darkest bowels of rural Essex, far removed from the Essex that has crystallised in the public’s imagination - the world of pneumatic blonde stunners and lagered-up lairy city boys - lies the infamous Kong Studios. Set on a hill miles from anywhere, the building, which seems to be permanently shrouded in a foggy darkness reminiscent of Jack The Ripper’s Victorian London, is master of all it surveys.
Legend has it that the site on which today’s mansion stands - built in 1749 by Sir Emerick Khong to fuel his lust for Bacchanalian orgies of every imaginable hue - was originally a druids’ meeting point. Local housewives whisper that in its time, the land has also been used as a cemetery (where many who died in the Great Plague of 1665 were buried); that the building is adjacent to one of the UK's biggest, and most stench-ridden, landfill sites; and that until 1993 the Khong Mansion was home to a bunch of Hell’s Angels who perished in a fire way down in the labyrinthian building’s basement. No one actually seems to know precisely where this ghoulish brick and mortar ode to society's underbelly is situated, leading some naysayers to doubt its existence, but in 2001 asymbolic bunch of technicoloured cartoon misfits emerged kicking and screaming from its haunted lair with the express intention of taking over the music industry. Led by their demonic bass player Murdoc, fronted by the instantly iconic singer 2D, underpinned by their rhythmical man mountain drummer Russel, laced with the preternatural musical genius of their 10-year-old Japanese guitarist Noodle and mates with Blur’s shadowy Damon Albarn, these exquisitely drawn boys (and girl) went by the name Gorillaz. And having announced themselves to an unsuspecting, befuddled and suspicious world - by way of selling six million copies of their eponymous debut - it soon became eerily clear that these two-dimensional freaks were imbued with the spirit of their notorious home.
“I tell you baby,” the booze-sodden Murdoc croaks, “once you're in Kong, you’re in Kong for life! This is a venue that talks to you even if you're abroad. It’s like the Overlook Hotel out of The Shining. A mind of its own.”
Russel concurs: “My companion here does have a point. Something about this place seems... inescapable. The pull is incredible.” “I feel like we've always lived there,” the charmingly infantile 2D adds.
Armed with this frightening knowledge, it was with great trepidation that The Big Issue accepted Gorillaz’s invitation to visit Kong Studios on the occasion of the release of their second album, the magical and symphonic lo-fi, psychedelic hip-hopera Demon Days. Hang on, cartoon bands? Satanic studios? Ten- year-old Japanese guitarists? It’s all a load of pretentious codswallop isn’t it? Perhaps, but why let the facts get in the way of acracking story. After all, it’s more fun than the crushingly dull everyman shtick proffered by such bores as Keane, The Stereophonics et al. Surely no one was left in any doubt that Gorillaz was the innovative brainchild of Damon Albarn and his former flatmate, Tank Girl cartoonist Jamie Hewlett? Less an elaborate ruse, ‘more a diaphanous tickle of pop music’s current fascination with image and spin.
In an age where popular culture - and therefore by proxy some of its more baser elements such as the often noxious world of pop - had become preoccupied with notions of surface, where the stylists and publicists run amok trying to hoodwink us into thinking the sporting of a Ramones t-shirt somehow confers authenticity, and where weekly ritual humiliation on TV qualified glorified club singers and stage school Muppets to popstar status, Gorillaz made, and continue to make, perfect sense. A cartoon band for an increasingly cartoon world. Naturally, Gorillaz weren’t born perfect: at times wacky, at others contrived (live, they are a disappointment), they were saved by Albarn’s innate sense of pop literacy and Hewlett’s fully formed, quasi-Beatles - which one’s your favourite? - characters. And now, four years on, they're back: bigger, badder, better. If Demon Days doesn't confirm Albarn’s standing as this generation’s pre-eminent musical adventurer, usurping even that notable eclectic-savant Beck, then we must be living in rarefied times. So, it’s back to the mysterious Kong Studios ... In 2001 Gorillaz - the lecherous Murdoc notwithstanding - were born bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. If a week is a long time in politics, four years is an eternity in music. Seduced by fame, 2D, Russel, Noodle and to some extent Murdoc have had to do their growing up in public. Only Noodle, still a relative bairn at 13, looks happy with her lot: a new mature, Bijork-like sensibility, radiating a self-possessed wellbeing. On the other hand, 2D, while still impossibly cool in his street urchin Steve Marriot manner, looks in need of a few decent square meals, his complexion pallid and gaunt; Russel appears disturbed, his mind in a constant state of flux; and Murdoc... well, Murdoc seems to be positively possessed, the totally epitome of dishevelled chic.
“What do you mean dishevelled chic,” he spits, his breath reeking. “My look is pure Dr Strange. It's a kinda Victorian Opium-eater meets East End thug with a little Marvin The Magician thrown in. Now that’s a look. Better than walking around all day in a pair of stupid trainers with your trousers down your ankles, looking like you've just soiled yourself. Baseball caps, man. What is that about? Chevy Chase? Kids today just seem to dress like... well... kids! In fact, most adults seem to dress like kids too.”
Quite. But as Noodle astutely noted earlier this year, “Every great band is destroyed by their success. Cartoon bands are no exception.” Buoyed by the inordinate success of their first album, the band went loop-da-loop. A year in Hollywood attempting to make a movie didn’t pan out. And so began an eventful couple of years for the foursome. Murdoc spent 18 months in a Mexican jail for passing dud cheques in a knocking shop (“Reformed character?” he jokes. “Piss off.") before converting to Mexican black magic. 2D hung out with Britt Eckland in LA before decamping back to Blighty and hooking up with Shane Lynch from Boyzone (“Me and him just sort of took Eastbourne over”).
Russel, meanwhile, the gentle giant carrying the soul of his dead rapper friend Del (Tha Funkee Homosapien) was visited by the Grim Reaper who relieved him of his pal, before he was rescued by Ike Turner. Scarred by his ordeal, he began work on the hip hop Pet Sounds. He only succeeded in emulating Brian Wilson and had a breakbeat breakdown. Noodle searched for her past in Japan and discovered her life story was spookily similar to parts of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. “I haven't spoken to Mr Tarantino. Although there is more than one way to tell a martial arts story of revenge and forgotten memory,” she says. Although Murdoc may call himself the de facto squadron leader of Gorillaz, Demon Days is Noodle’s vision. Murdoc might say that the band’s second album is fuelled by a “lust for glory”, but it's Noodle’s more considered thoughts on the album which really shaped its evolution. To wit: “The soul of the recording can’t avoid being a manifestation of the time, climate and location of the place we were in when it was recorded. Consequently, the colours are rich, dark and heavy, while the rhythms are clean, strategic and relentless. It has a consciousness to it.”
Or, somewhat simpler: “The other members of Gorillaz did not return to Kong until it was time for them to play their relevant parts, so I had the building to myself during most of the writing period.” What Noodle has crafted, then, is an album of intricate beauty. Fired by slogans half-inched from self-help fortune cookies (Reject False Icons, Death From Below), Demon Days, implausible as it sounds, is an environmentally conscious world album, as song titles like Every Planet We Reach Is Dead, O Green World, Last Living Souls and Don’t Get Lost In Heaven suggest. Thankfully though, it’s leagues away from Sting’s brand of irksome self-publicity and muso blandness. Produced by hip-hop auteur Dangermouse (the bravura genius behind last year’s The Grey Album, the meshing of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album) and featuring guests such as Shaun Ryder, Roots Manuva, Ike Turner, Dennis Hopper, De La Soul, the London Community Gospel Choir and the San Fernandez Youth Chorus, it’s a vibrant and visceral success. “The first album was more upbeat,” Russel suggests. “And the songs were not necessarily all connected. This album has an arc to it.”
Enthused by what he’s heard, Murdoc begins to boast. “I would settle for the definite realisation that Gorillaz are the kings of all they survey,” he says. “The dons of modern music. Unbeatable. And I want to see it on paper, signed by everyone.”
Seeking our escape from Kong, someone opines that surely a document purporting to that fact is being drawn up as we speak. However, the small matter of returning to civilisation has still to be addressed. Just how does one leave Kong? “Practice mate,” Murdoc laughs sinisterly. “It's the only way to get anywhere.”
Demon Days is released on May 23 (Parlophone).