Justine Frischmann introduced me to Damon Albarn in 1991 outside the Falcon in Camden. His stare was beautiful but glacial; he just wasn't interested. I mumbled something about how his group Blur was playing soon at the Astoria. The next time I saw him was at Subterania, under the Westway. Justine had dragged him along to a Momus gig and he was hating it. He stood up on the balcony throwing tinfoil ashtrays in my direction. When Blur became the biggest group in Britpop it became clear that Damon was a difficult character, prickly and competitive. Nevertheless, the next item in my "memories of Damon" file is me telling Alan McGee (who's just signed Oasis) that Albarn is the most talented songwriter of his generation. Then I remember sitting on a bus and reading how Albarn has titled Blur's album "Modern Life Is Rubbish" as a tribute to postmodern recycling, and how a disastrous American tour has left him feeling more British than ever. Flash forward to Paris, 1994. I've got married, and Blur have released "Girls and Boys". I think it's a terrific single. A reporter from the Daily Record is interviewing me on the Place Du Tertre about my marriage, conducted in rather dramatic circumstances. She wants to know what kind of music I like. "Don't tell me you like that din by Blur!" she gasps. I don't, but I do. I also like the silly dialogue in the middle of "Parklife" about wellbeing and pigeons. And the channelling of Ray Davies, vaudeville and Madness.
In the doldrum years of Britpop I lose interest in Blur. I mean, I see them live in Paris, I hear the singles, I note that their videos are Benny Hill skits directed by Damian Hirst. Nice! But I don't hear the albums. Damon seems to reverse his previous stance on America, developing a love-hate relationship with Stephen Malkmus. Blur becomes Pavement for a while, but Pavement does it better. Albarn buys a house in Iceland. He fucks lots of girls and Justine leaves him. I meet Graham Coxon at a Divine Comedy gig at the Garage and tell him Kahimi Karie would like him to write songs for her, and what's more is selling hundreds of thousands of records in Japan. "That's too many," says Graham, with the same icy glacial "fuck you" stare I'd seen on Damon.
But Albarn does collaborate with one of the Shibuya-kei people: he makes remixes of "Star Fruits Surf Rider" for Cornelius. His tastes seem to shadow mine. He even chooses Julian Opie to do Blur's compilation cover. He gets into World Music and makes a nice record in Mali, then promises to do another in Mongolia. But the next time I really pay attention is in New York, 2002. The first Gorillaz album comes out. Gorillaz is Damon's bubblegum pop cartoon band, only it's maudlin and eclectic. It's also amazingly successful. And the website cartoons, by Jamie Hewlett, are brilliant, redolent of the zany fantasia of Saturday morning Cartoon Network.
I've already been paying attention, in 2002, to Dan "The Automator" Nakamura and Del Tha Funky Homosapien, listening to their
Deltron 3030 album of speculative sci-fi hip hop, and I like what they do with Albarn's material too. The first Gorillaz album isn't a purchase, but it's a download, and one I find myself playing quite a bit as I prepare to record my
Oskar Tennis Champion album in Tokyo. Somehow, despite Albarn's thousand yard stare, he's family. It's easy to project Japanese forebears for the Gorillaz project: the ape imagery comes from Cornelius, the sampladelica from Towa Tei, the Noodle character is modelled on Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori. The project could be Damon's version of James Lavelle's U.N.K.L.E. project (Lavelle has also been spotted at every London Cornelius gig), but the inventiveness and pathos of Albarn's songs takes them beyond Lavelle's material, even if cut and paste and cellphone collaboration links the two groups.
So, three years later there's a new Gorillaz album,
Demon Days, with a new Jamie Hewlett
website to promote it. Click your way over to the jukebox in the entrance hall up in the mad scientist's house above the graveyard and you can hear all the tracks. They're full of borrowings, startling sonic tricks, pathos, "rewrites of
Ghost Town" (as one reviewer put it), guest raps, nice catchy throat tricks in Damon's ever-evolving vocalisation technique, surprisingly spliced choruses about windmills, and just catchy, catchy postmodern pop music. "Feel Good Inc" is my favourite single of the year, and Hewlett's video for it (click your way to the cinema room) is straight out of Miyazaki's
Howl's Moving Castle, my film of the year so far.
Demon Days is the kind of record I wish Cornelius were still making. It's Shibuyua-kei, the Beastie Boys and all those 70s-in-the-90s people dead and gone to heaven, reborn as cartoons. It makes me nostalgic for pomo pop. Where did I leave my analog synths? What did it feel like making
Stars Forever? Ah, it felt like "anything goes", and it felt like endless collaboration. It felt a bit like joining the Gorillaz, the 21st century Monkees.
2D, aka Damon Albarn, has done it again. He's getting better at what he does, and he was good to begin with. I might even buy the record this time. Keep the spiky fucker in Icelandic beer and hair transplants.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 07:13 am (UTC)What are your thoughts on the characters that were made for the artists? Noodle and 2D seem quite interesting to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 07:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 07:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 07:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 07:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 07:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 08:30 am (UTC)It's based on a book by one of my favourite children's authors, Diana Wynne Jones; but I wish they'd make her Charmed Life which is a far superior book, particularly for the Victoriaphiles (and, I'm sorry to admit, Anglophiles) among us...
<3
Date: 2005-06-01 08:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 12:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 08:27 am (UTC)Antonin
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 08:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 08:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 08:53 am (UTC)hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 10:46 am (UTC)If only Denim could have beaten Gorillaz to the punch.
On a slightly slanderous note!.....Is it common knowledge that the Albarn one is undergoing hair replacement treatments??
Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 10:59 am (UTC)Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 11:06 am (UTC)Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 11:10 am (UTC)Before the Anon-Albarn detractors ask, yes, I am also losing my hair, but very very slowly. Even more slowly than I am learning Japanese, in fact. By the time I have Lawrence Denim-like levels of exposed pate, I will speak perfect nihongo, which will be some consolation, I can tell you.
Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 11:12 am (UTC)Ah, they were there, poison pens poised! Et tu, Albarn?
Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 11:28 am (UTC)Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 11:31 am (UTC)Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 11:39 am (UTC)Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 03:25 pm (UTC)I purchased Demon Days and Otto Spooky (yes, I know I'm late on the take) the day before leaving for my trip to Seattle. I've been enjoying both records immensely and find myself having to toss a coin in order decide which album I will listen to.
"Robin Hood" is genius. If you like listener feedback I can give you a more indepth response to the album.
I agree whole-heartedly that "Feel Good Inc." is the strongest single I've heard so far this year...and I've been hearing it a lot...it's in i-pod commercials here in the US.
Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 11:30 am (UTC)Re: hair transplants
Date: 2005-06-01 06:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 11:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 11:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 11:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 11:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 10:39 pm (UTC)Also I wonder if 'Wataridori' is an indication of where his muse is headed, or was it simply left over from the 'Point' sessions??
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 10:40 pm (UTC)Also I wonder if 'Wataridori' is an indication of where his muse is headed, or was it simply left over from the 'Point' sessions??
(One of the many grey cats out there)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 12:15 pm (UTC)scavenger hunt no toki
Date: 2005-06-01 12:23 pm (UTC)you used "maudlin" again!
i think i shall build a dictionary/thesaurus pinata.
but i'll have to sneak some candy in there too lest i land an overflowing head and an empty stomach.
(+i<3gorillaz!)
)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 01:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 03:13 pm (UTC)The original Gorillaz album was hit and miss for me. I loved the concept, and the whole musical pastiche of it all, but only a few songs really hooked me in, whilst the rest saw the skip button. This new album though is much more consistent. Albarn should definately be applauded for not resting on his success with blur and instead hiding his celebrity behind such a ridiculous idea as a cartoon band, creating fantastic music, and pulling it all off.
- Nathan
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 06:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 08:30 pm (UTC)- robyn
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 08:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 11:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-01 11:44 pm (UTC)Do have to wish I'd met Graham Coxon at a Divine Comedy gig. If there's one person I'd love to meet... well it's either you, Graham, or Neil Hannon. Too bad I missed that boat, eh?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 01:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 06:29 am (UTC)unhealthy hero worship
Date: 2005-06-02 09:03 am (UTC)i had more faith in you.
an essay on damon? i hope one of those tin ashtrays hit you in the balls, cunt.
Re: unhealthy hero worship
Date: 2005-06-02 09:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 03:02 pm (UTC)On the new albarn turned to Danger Mouse to ask him to produce. Nakamura and Del didn't come along. But De La Soul, Shaun Ryder, Debbie Harry, Dennis Hopper, and Martina Topley-Bird did. ofcourse Damon, Miho, Tina and Chris was around aswell.
If I get it right.
Names from www.allmusic.com
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-02 07:19 pm (UTC)As a Japanese-America, guys like Dan make me proud because they make us look good. We're not ALL karate-kicking, SAT-stomping, engineering degree-earning academic career machines. Some of us dig the funkee beets,* too.
*I know what I typed.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-04 02:29 am (UTC)Justine???
Date: 2005-06-05 04:24 am (UTC)