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For a project that could easily have been little more than Damon Albarn Remakes "Ghost Town" 15 Times (With More Rapping & Cartoons), this is a follow-up that proves Gorillaz, weirdly, has legs- not that the four-year break hurt any. But also like the debut, Demon Days is better than it has any right to be, featuring singles stronger than anything released under the Blur banner since, you know, that "Woo-hoo" song. Like the Gorillaz's self-titled debut, Demon Days goes the way of most auteur projects, its oversize idea load making for a trip equal parts peak and valley.
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Coyly hiding behind Jamie Hewlett's thick-inked pop caricatures and a phalanx of guest stars, Gorillaz allows Albarn to practice self-indulgence under heavy personality camouflage- though never so heavy that there's any question as to who's really pulling the strings. (Did anyone really expect an edgy street-cred Banana Splits to be worth discussing four years into its discography?) Rather than falling flat, Gorillaz have strangely become a therapeutic and clever way for Albarn to subvert the usual egolympics associated with a solo project.
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I then tried to freestyle something, a right load of gibberish, and it ended up in.” Dazzlingly eclectic and subversiveĮlsewhere, Demon Days mixed foreboding grooves with a playful musical approach: Dirty Harry brings together an irresistible groove, children’s choir and string breaks Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey’s Head sees actor Dennis Hopper narrating a parable about the destructive nature of humankind over a Specials-like slice of foreboding reggae All Alone sees Albarn trying on the droll punk-funk of Ian Dury And The Blockheads for size.Fortunately, Gorillaz provides Albarn an outlet to vent his taste for sci-fi kitsch, and satiate his urge to break free from rock with guitars- and it's a surprisingly successful outlet, at that. I started saying to them to turn it up and the track was very slowly turning up, so I started going, ‘It’s coming up, it’s coming up, it’s coming up,’ and when it got as loud as I wanted it, I said, ‘It’s dare.’ As in like text-speak language – ‘I will c u der’. Freestyle off the top of your head, make it up…’ So I put the headphones on and there was no track. I had the cans on, and he said, ‘Go in the studio and try and do something. Similarly, while Gorillaz’s debut had featured a smattering of star turns ( Talking Heads’ Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club, Del The Funky Homosapien), for Demon Days Albarn aimed big, recruiting a fantastically disparate array of talent to bring his vision to life, including De La Soul, Neneh Cherry, MF Doom, Shaun Ryder, Marina Topley-Bird, Dennis Hopper and Roots Manuva.Īgain, Albarn’s newfound creative freedom provided happy accidents that led to magical moments, as Ryder told NME in 2015: “Damon put a track on, it had no lyrics. The decision demonstrated Albarn’s eye for spotting up-and-coming talent: Danger Mouse had only recently come to prominence with The Grey Album (an innovative mash-up of The Beatles’ “The White Album” and Jay-Z’s The Black Album), but that was enough to convince Albarn that he was the man for the job. Rather than repeat the tried-and-tested formula that had worked so well on Gorillaz’s debut, Albarn mixed things up from the off, with Danger Mouse replacing Dan The Automator on production duties. Hidden behind his animated band, Albarn could try things that he would never have dared as the frontman of one of the biggest indie bands of the 90s. Released four years later, the hip-hop inspired cartoon side-project’s follow-up, Demon Days, took things to another level, becoming the biggest-selling album of Albarn’s career, eclipsing landmark Blur records and giving its mastermind a huge amount of artistic freedom.
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Released in 2001, it gave Albarn unprecedented global success – particularly in the US, where his fortunes with Blur, the band he’d first found fame with, had often been mixed. It’s unlikely that even Damon Albarn could have foreseen the success of Gorillaz’s self-titled debut album.