Gorillaz: Life's A Beach
Juice, April 2010
While us lesser mortals were struggling with trifles like the credit crunch and flu-like symptoms, the night crawling creatures of Gorillaz were weathering more realistic battles in the form of Russian pirates, arson, mental breakdowns, paternity suits and oh, maybe a certified double platinum album, or two. So you can't really blame the quartet of 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel for ducking under the radar for almost five years – they were, after all, being targeted by the underworld, which is serious. In any case, they're back now and they've got an album to prove it.
Plastic Beach follows up on the spiffed-out electro-hip-hop-rock examples set by Gorillaz and Demon Days, and continues to boldly go where no pop has gone before. Inspired by the Plastic Beach on which Murdoc took refuge from those pirates from hell, the album's got a whole concept riding behind it, as well as this crazy collaborator list which reads Lou Reed, Little Dragon, Mos Def, Snoop Dogg, Mark E. Smith, Mick Jones and so on. Shit is epic, dude. The only thing bigger than the sound of this record is the entire tale behind it – how Gorillaz went from a headlining slot at New York's Apollo, to Ike Turner's basement, to helicopter shoot-outs, to plastic paradise. And true story too! But Murdoc spins it best…
The last we saw of Gorillaz, you were headlining New York's Apollo, back in 2006. But then the band sort of disappeared after that…
Well, I instigated my own disappearance, certainly. I just wanted to purge my soul of all things Gorillaz. The Demon Days album had been a long haul for all of us and I just want to have a long Lost Weekend. Somehow, I managed to string it out for about three years. It's amazing what kind of fun you can get up to with a Coutts credit card and a big bottle of absinthe…
Wild. What about the others – what'd they get up to?
The last time I saw Noodle, she was being shot at by helicopters at as she parachuted off the floating island in the "El Manana" video. Haven’t seen
her since. Still, Great video… And Russel, as you know, had his big, bad breakdown. He ended up living in "Ike Turner's basement", which I thought
was a euphemism for something, until Ike Turner turned up to play on Demon Days. And 2D… well, I don’t know or care what he got up to. I remember operating on him at Kong Studios [The Gorillaz HQ]. I chloroformed him and then stole all his organs!
So why the disappearing act?
People were hunting me down! I’d just come back from a long trip to the demonic underworld. When I got back to Kong Studios, I found the place collapsing, full of zombies and just a mess. And I knew that all those other people we’re still looking for me – the underworld entities, The Black Clouds, and the deranged fans turning up with the paternity suits and stuff… I had to move on from Kong.
You must've done something naughty to be hunted down like that.
I'll tell you what happened. After Gorillaz split, I’d partied my way round the world. But then the money dried up. I needed to get some new funds, so I tried my hand at amateur arms dealing. But I ran into to some um… dissatisfied customers, in particular an underground network group of pirates called The Black Clouds. They’ve been after me since they appeared uninvited in that "El Manana" video. I'd stiffed them with the dud scuds and the blood between us turned very bad…
And shortly after that, Kong Studios burnt to the ground… WTF?
Oh yeah… I’d put the place up for sale, and to be honest Kong Studios is a piece of rock n’ roll history… National Heritage. But no-one was biting, so I just torched the place. I blamed it on some local kids. I pocketed the cash and they all went to jail… (Laughs)
Okay, so you were in hiding from underworld pirates and you needed a new studio…
Yeah. I needed somewhere isolated and really hidden – somewhere not even Google could find me. So I hauled one of the helicopters from the "Feelgood Inc" video out of storage and fired it up. I scouted the globe, zipping around all over the place… Arctic tundra, Amazon jungle, down the back of the sofa, until finally I found it. The perfect Plastic palace Point Nemo – No Man's Land!
Where the hell's that?
The place furthest from any other landmass on the planet – it was just a giant piece of rotten plastic in the middle of nowhere. It was a landfill of grease, garbage, destruction, rusty old pipes and dumped bits of plastic. That didn't bother me though. I painted the whole thing bright pink and got on with it. My own plastic beach… TA DA!
Lucky you! So what'd you do with that Plastic Beach?
The first thing I did was build a big Tracey Island-type playboy mansion, right on top of this Plastic Beach. Just a towering monstrous building that houses everything from my new HQ to my state-of-the-art recording studio. It makes Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio look, well, Real Rubbish!
Did you get a couple of good demos from that?
Initially, I just started twanging away alone. Me, my bass and crate of rum, sat on the beach just warbling along to my sponge-y dub rhythms and recording straight into my laptop. Happy days! Then some of it started making sense. Over the months, the melodies came into focus and the songs demanded to be finessed and defined.
Was that when you decided to put Gorillaz back together?
Well, Gorillaz is my band. I don't really have to "put it back together". I am Gorillaz. But yeah, I thought it was time to release another one of my "long-playing emissions". See, when Gorillaz is up and running, everything’s sweet and dandy. I can make swanky videos and swan around the globe like I own the place, while playing my dirty, black bass over some fantastic music. So I started carving out the Plastic Beach record. When I had the foundations nice and solid, I thought to get some entertainers on board, y'know, to colour the picture in.
So, starting with Noodle – did you manage to find her, since she's been reported missing since "El Manana"?
I couldn’t seem to track her down, I went back to the place that’d I last seen her, the crash site of the "El Manana" video. However, there was nothing left other than burnt out remains, so I scraped up some of Noodle's DNA samples from the wreckage and stuck it in a jar. And I still couldn't find her after six months, so I just pulled out that jar of "Noodle DNA" and built a cyborg version of her. It ain't the real Noodle but it's close enough for jazz!
And how did you get hold of Russel?
I don't think I've managed to get a hold of him. He's way too big! (Laughs) I did make an effort to track Russ down, but y'know, his psyche's very weak, very fragile. So I just ended up programming the drums myself. I used a fair amount of Russel's drum takes and programmes, bits and pieces of his that I've recorded over the years. Great stuff that should've launched his solo career… but now it's a Gorillaz record! So boo hoo to him. Drummers? Who needs 'em?
Not Gorillaz, apparently. Finally, 2D…
Good grief. He's harder to shift than herpes! But whatever you think of him, his voice is an integral part of Gorillaz. I'd done what I needed to on Plastic Beach, but it was still missing that magic vocal touch. I needed that "melancholic soul" for the album, but 2D refused. Pffft! As if he's got a choice! I just gassed him out cold, shipped him over to Plastic Beach, installed him in a room downstairs and I got the job done. Got his vocals and they sound incredible. He should be happy and grateful that I bothered to drag him over.
Just as you dragged over a couple of collaborators. How did they get shipped over to the Plastic Beach?
Various methods. One way is you can phone them up and ask them. You've got to remember that the Gorillaz name goes a long way now. For many people, a Gorillaz collaboration is like a day off, where they can get to take part in this surreal little theme park that sails round the world with me, Murdoc Niccals, at the helm. Not many people refuse an invitation. I sent copters out to pick them up one by one and fly them out, all like top secret-style – but like Fantasy Island.
So what does Plastic Beach – the island and the record – stand for?
I just noticed that since the beginning of time, each leap of evolution and innovation has taken a shorter and shorter amount of time. The population of the planet had gone from one to seven billion in the last 100 years, and digital information and technology have exploded in this last century. We're crammed packed. Everything is getting faster and faster, and all of time and evolution is hurtling towards a single point; Plastic Beach. That's what Plastic Beach is; The End of Days… the point of no return. It's right here. It's right now. It's upon us.
Deep! But oh, you never did tell us what happened to The Black Clouds.
They've tracked me down on Plastic Beach already. I've been shot at loads out there. One of them put a hole in my island the other day. In fact, that's how our single Stylo got leaked – siphoned out of my island by some filthy Russian pirates. I’ll get ‘em back though… Don’t you worry! I’m good at stuff like that…
www.gorillaz.com
Plastic Beach follows up on the spiffed-out electro-hip-hop-rock examples set by Gorillaz and Demon Days, and continues to boldly go where no pop has gone before. Inspired by the Plastic Beach on which Murdoc took refuge from those pirates from hell, the album's got a whole concept riding behind it, as well as this crazy collaborator list which reads Lou Reed, Little Dragon, Mos Def, Snoop Dogg, Mark E. Smith, Mick Jones and so on. Shit is epic, dude. The only thing bigger than the sound of this record is the entire tale behind it – how Gorillaz went from a headlining slot at New York's Apollo, to Ike Turner's basement, to helicopter shoot-outs, to plastic paradise. And true story too! But Murdoc spins it best…
The last we saw of Gorillaz, you were headlining New York's Apollo, back in 2006. But then the band sort of disappeared after that…
Well, I instigated my own disappearance, certainly. I just wanted to purge my soul of all things Gorillaz. The Demon Days album had been a long haul for all of us and I just want to have a long Lost Weekend. Somehow, I managed to string it out for about three years. It's amazing what kind of fun you can get up to with a Coutts credit card and a big bottle of absinthe…
Wild. What about the others – what'd they get up to?
The last time I saw Noodle, she was being shot at by helicopters at as she parachuted off the floating island in the "El Manana" video. Haven’t seen
her since. Still, Great video… And Russel, as you know, had his big, bad breakdown. He ended up living in "Ike Turner's basement", which I thought
was a euphemism for something, until Ike Turner turned up to play on Demon Days. And 2D… well, I don’t know or care what he got up to. I remember operating on him at Kong Studios [The Gorillaz HQ]. I chloroformed him and then stole all his organs!
So why the disappearing act?
People were hunting me down! I’d just come back from a long trip to the demonic underworld. When I got back to Kong Studios, I found the place collapsing, full of zombies and just a mess. And I knew that all those other people we’re still looking for me – the underworld entities, The Black Clouds, and the deranged fans turning up with the paternity suits and stuff… I had to move on from Kong.
You must've done something naughty to be hunted down like that.
I'll tell you what happened. After Gorillaz split, I’d partied my way round the world. But then the money dried up. I needed to get some new funds, so I tried my hand at amateur arms dealing. But I ran into to some um… dissatisfied customers, in particular an underground network group of pirates called The Black Clouds. They’ve been after me since they appeared uninvited in that "El Manana" video. I'd stiffed them with the dud scuds and the blood between us turned very bad…
And shortly after that, Kong Studios burnt to the ground… WTF?
Oh yeah… I’d put the place up for sale, and to be honest Kong Studios is a piece of rock n’ roll history… National Heritage. But no-one was biting, so I just torched the place. I blamed it on some local kids. I pocketed the cash and they all went to jail… (Laughs)
Okay, so you were in hiding from underworld pirates and you needed a new studio…
Yeah. I needed somewhere isolated and really hidden – somewhere not even Google could find me. So I hauled one of the helicopters from the "Feelgood Inc" video out of storage and fired it up. I scouted the globe, zipping around all over the place… Arctic tundra, Amazon jungle, down the back of the sofa, until finally I found it. The perfect Plastic palace Point Nemo – No Man's Land!
Where the hell's that?
The place furthest from any other landmass on the planet – it was just a giant piece of rotten plastic in the middle of nowhere. It was a landfill of grease, garbage, destruction, rusty old pipes and dumped bits of plastic. That didn't bother me though. I painted the whole thing bright pink and got on with it. My own plastic beach… TA DA!
Lucky you! So what'd you do with that Plastic Beach?
The first thing I did was build a big Tracey Island-type playboy mansion, right on top of this Plastic Beach. Just a towering monstrous building that houses everything from my new HQ to my state-of-the-art recording studio. It makes Peter Gabriel’s Real World studio look, well, Real Rubbish!
Did you get a couple of good demos from that?
Initially, I just started twanging away alone. Me, my bass and crate of rum, sat on the beach just warbling along to my sponge-y dub rhythms and recording straight into my laptop. Happy days! Then some of it started making sense. Over the months, the melodies came into focus and the songs demanded to be finessed and defined.
Was that when you decided to put Gorillaz back together?
Well, Gorillaz is my band. I don't really have to "put it back together". I am Gorillaz. But yeah, I thought it was time to release another one of my "long-playing emissions". See, when Gorillaz is up and running, everything’s sweet and dandy. I can make swanky videos and swan around the globe like I own the place, while playing my dirty, black bass over some fantastic music. So I started carving out the Plastic Beach record. When I had the foundations nice and solid, I thought to get some entertainers on board, y'know, to colour the picture in.
So, starting with Noodle – did you manage to find her, since she's been reported missing since "El Manana"?
I couldn’t seem to track her down, I went back to the place that’d I last seen her, the crash site of the "El Manana" video. However, there was nothing left other than burnt out remains, so I scraped up some of Noodle's DNA samples from the wreckage and stuck it in a jar. And I still couldn't find her after six months, so I just pulled out that jar of "Noodle DNA" and built a cyborg version of her. It ain't the real Noodle but it's close enough for jazz!
And how did you get hold of Russel?
I don't think I've managed to get a hold of him. He's way too big! (Laughs) I did make an effort to track Russ down, but y'know, his psyche's very weak, very fragile. So I just ended up programming the drums myself. I used a fair amount of Russel's drum takes and programmes, bits and pieces of his that I've recorded over the years. Great stuff that should've launched his solo career… but now it's a Gorillaz record! So boo hoo to him. Drummers? Who needs 'em?
Not Gorillaz, apparently. Finally, 2D…
Good grief. He's harder to shift than herpes! But whatever you think of him, his voice is an integral part of Gorillaz. I'd done what I needed to on Plastic Beach, but it was still missing that magic vocal touch. I needed that "melancholic soul" for the album, but 2D refused. Pffft! As if he's got a choice! I just gassed him out cold, shipped him over to Plastic Beach, installed him in a room downstairs and I got the job done. Got his vocals and they sound incredible. He should be happy and grateful that I bothered to drag him over.
Just as you dragged over a couple of collaborators. How did they get shipped over to the Plastic Beach?
Various methods. One way is you can phone them up and ask them. You've got to remember that the Gorillaz name goes a long way now. For many people, a Gorillaz collaboration is like a day off, where they can get to take part in this surreal little theme park that sails round the world with me, Murdoc Niccals, at the helm. Not many people refuse an invitation. I sent copters out to pick them up one by one and fly them out, all like top secret-style – but like Fantasy Island.
So what does Plastic Beach – the island and the record – stand for?
I just noticed that since the beginning of time, each leap of evolution and innovation has taken a shorter and shorter amount of time. The population of the planet had gone from one to seven billion in the last 100 years, and digital information and technology have exploded in this last century. We're crammed packed. Everything is getting faster and faster, and all of time and evolution is hurtling towards a single point; Plastic Beach. That's what Plastic Beach is; The End of Days… the point of no return. It's right here. It's right now. It's upon us.
Deep! But oh, you never did tell us what happened to The Black Clouds.
They've tracked me down on Plastic Beach already. I've been shot at loads out there. One of them put a hole in my island the other day. In fact, that's how our single Stylo got leaked – siphoned out of my island by some filthy Russian pirates. I’ll get ‘em back though… Don’t you worry! I’m good at stuff like that…
www.gorillaz.com