Damon Albarn had a supernatural experience last weekend. At least, that’s what he thought it was. The Gorillaz frontman was alone at his home in rural Devon – “this old, gothic farmhouse with cows outside, and the stars, and all that beautiful stuff” – when he started hearing a sound. “It was like ‘Tssssst!’, and then complete silence,” he recalls, shaking his head. “I started to get really quite concerned, because we’ve had problems with ghosts in the past. I had smoked a bit as well, so everything was heightened,” he chuckles.
“It happens again – ‘Tsssst!’ – and I’m starting to think ‘C’mon, there’s something weird going on here – if it’s a mouse, it’s got a little spade and it’s digging stuff, and waiting to see if no one hears ...” After some time being “terrified”, he eventually discovered the culprit. “In one of the rooms was a fly zap,” he says, grimacing. “Anyway. I don’t know how that connects to where we started with that question, but if you go back, it might. Or it might not.”
The 54-year-old Albarn has established himself as one of the most consistently creative and boundary-pushing musicians of his generation, but he also has an endearing habit of digressing. He’s here to talk about Cracker Island by Gorillaz – the “virtual” band that he formed with artist Jamie Hewlett in 1998.
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Sun pours through the windows of the infinitely less-terrifying surrounds of the top floor of Studio 13 in West London, which has been his HQ since the late 1990s. “It’s a beautiful day; it feels like the beginning of spring,” he says, a bank of keyboards and synths to his right, books and records lining the shelves behind him. Wearing a baseball cap and glasses, Albarn initially seems pensive following the recent death of one of his collaborators, Trugoy the Dove from hip-hop pioneers De La Soul. The artist known as “Dave” to his friends featured prominently on Gorillaz songs Feel Good Inc., Superfast Jellyfish and Momentz, and Albarn had been writing with him until a few months ago.
“Dave’s someone who was like ... a musical soulmate,” he says, thoughtful. “Like a lot of the people I work with, you find the thing that makes the collaborations work and somehow feel meaningful is that moment where you have a collective feeling of joy – however momentary it is. It’s a form of love, really, isn’t it? I’ve lost one of the loves of my life. So ... yeah.” He sighs. “But he’ll always be with me, and many, many other people.”
Gorillaz was initially formed as a way for Albarn to explore other musical genres and collaborations outside of his day job with Blur, but since 1998 his career has taken him down a multitude of exciting avenues – from his work with Africa Express to a brace of idiosyncratic solo albums and beyond. He has fronted sporadic supergroups (The Good, the Bad and the Queen and Rocket Juice & the Moon) and has even written an opera (Monkey: Journey to the West) – but the reason he keeps returning to Gorillaz after all this time is simple.
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“I love writing, it’s one of my joys,” he says, shrugging as he notes how his initial forays into home recordings on 4-tracks as a teenager gave way to tinkering on Garageband for Gorillaz. “Garageband is so easy for me to write little fragments and arrangement ideas on, and you can just take it anywhere. So I write all the time, really,” he says. “It’s a condition, really: I don’t know what it’s called. It’s kind of the opposite of writer’s block. It’s like exercising: I do yoga, I write, I eat, I breathe. They’re my things. So there’s always a lot of stuff.
“And Gorillaz – because it’s mostly me making the music at any point – it’s very easy to develop it a bit, and hey presto, you’ve got something. But on this occasion, I tried a different approach. I try a different approach each time, because it’s kind of boring just to spend time with yourself, always. And I do like my own company, except for obviously when I’m faced with a fly zap,” he grins. “Then, I need a friend.”
Cracker Island was largely influenced by the time that he and Hewlett spent in Los Angeles in 2021. “At that point, we were working with Netflix – we’re not any more,” he says, referring to the previously-planned Gorillaz feature that was in development with the streaming giants in 2021. He does not elaborate on the reasons their partnership has ended. “There’s a very strange hierarchical meeting mechanism in Los Angeles, and it’s like a clock: if you make it past the first hour, you’re in. I think we just made it past the first hour, and then the clock stopped.” He shrugs.
“But there was a lot of time spare, so I thought ‘Oh well, I’ll see if anyone is out there who wants to develop my iPad demos a bit more, and try to make a serious pop record.’ It’s a really hard thing to do, and I fail most of the time. I’m sure I’ve failed again, but the allure of it still appeals to me.”
You learn a lot about interior decorating when you discover the meeting rooms of hotels
In the past Albarn has written a lot of Gorillaz material on the move, rather than ensconced in his studio.
“I like writing Gorillaz stuff when I’m travelling quite a lot, yeah,” he agrees. “I don’t know why: maybe it’s to do with motion? I just like writing. The stuff I’ve been doing since then, which I’m near completion with, I’ve done in a different way. But it’s still just all writing, y’know? I write on the road... I take an engineer out and we set up in the most ridiculous places, sometimes. Quite a lot of meeting rooms in mid-price hotels in America,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s quite interesting: you learn a lot about interior decorating when you discover the meeting rooms of hotels.”
This time, learning how to drive during the pandemic meant that he could get out and explore the city’s environs in a way that he hadn’t been able to in the past.
“[I was] staying on Sunset Boulevard, which I seem to have been since 1990 – I don’t seem to have ever progressed from there,” he says, grinning. “And for a long time, that was a problem because I don’t drive. But during lockdown, I did eventually get my licence because as a committed cyclist for 28 years in LA, I wasn’t really going anywhere. But now I drive, I’ve discovered what an amazingly eclectic and creative and interesting place it is. So that’s why this record is kind of inspired from that perspective; being on Sunset Boulevard and looking down on this extraordinary metropolis, and imagining these islands of ideas, trying to create some kind of narrative art in an abstract way. That’s what I always try to do, but it’s quite difficult – because ‘abstract’ and ‘narrative’ aren’t necessarily two things that marry well. But that’s always the challenge with pop music, to see if you can somehow bridge that gap.”
The first song recorded for Cracker Island was Tormenta, a collaboration with Latin rapper Bad Bunny in Jamaica. The track came off the back of Gorillaz’ Song Machine project – a series of stand-alone collaborations released throughout 2020, which he says he “would love to do that again – I mean, I’d be doing that now,” he says, noting how Cracker Island was actually finished in March 2022. Instead, his ambition to make a “serious pop record” aligned him with one of the best pop producers in the business, Greg Kurstin.
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“It was very quick, very spontaneous, very joyful,” says Albarn of their partnership. “[It was just] the two of us, basically. He’s got an amazing studio, with the sickest keyboard configuration, that I’ve ever been in. I mean, Jean-Michel Jarre’s is probably more impressive, and definitely a nicer location... but Greg Kurstin, the way it was set up: everything was ready to play, it had all been EQ-ed beautifully, everything was arranged in this timbre beautifully. It was just a fantastic room to work in.”
The Los Angeles-based Kurstin also helped to shape Cracker Island by suggesting several collaborators for the record, including genre-defying Thundercat on the title track and Stevie Nicks on Oil. Other guest vocalists include Beck, Gorillaz regular Bootie Brown and Adeleye Omatayo, previously a member of The Humanz Choir, which toured with the band throughout 2017 and 2018.
[Tech companies are] quite mean in allowing interpollination of creative ideas, when it’s quite clearly really, really great.
“With [the song] Cracker Island, I wanted a more high falsetto answer-phrase – and I’d written what I wanted it to say, and [Kurstin] suggested Thundercat,” says Albarn. “Who I kind of knew, but I didn’t actually remember meeting him – but I met him with Erykah Badu many years ago at my studio. So he did it with Greg while I wasn’t there, because I wasn’t in LA much. In fact, I was only there at the studio with him for nine days, 10 days in total. So it was quite quick.”
Albarn says that he initially wanted Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas for the song Oil.
“That’s who first came to mind when I wrote it. And then one day, [Kurstin] said ‘Well, have you ever thought about Stevie Nicks?’ And I said ‘Well, now that you’ve said that…’,” he recalls, laughing. “That’s the lovely thing: when it’s right, you just hear it immediately. So he was meeting her the next week, he played it for her, she liked it, boom. Bob’s your uncle.”
The Californian influence is especially audible on songs such as the dreamy, laid-back Tarantula, and the gloopy slow motion vibe of The Tired Influencer, which accidentally entangled itself with technology as he was recording it.
“I’m really proud of that song, actually,” he says. “The lovely thing about that, and no word of a lie – when I was doing the lead vocals, I had them on my iPad and I put the iPad on the stand. And obviously it was weighted down in some way, and Siri came on. So I’m singing ‘It’s a cracked screen world ...’ – and at first I’m not aware of it [but] Siri’s answering each phrase, because there was no music. All that Siri was hearing was my disembodied voice, because I’ve got the rest [of the song] in headphones. So after the take, I realised there was this whole conversation with Siri in the background, which is kind of wonderful in the sense that the song is about people whose lives are almost dictated by their interaction with social media. So social media and technology was reacting.”
The natural progression of technology in music is one thing, but Albarn has a valid point to make about other artists using it to inform their work. Considering how Gorillaz were initially formed as a reaction to the hellscape that MTV had become in the late 1990s, Albarn’s views on the likes of Tik Tok are unexpected, however.
I’m digging myself a hole here now, aren’t I? I can see it. It’s opened up in front of me, and I’m not gonna jump in it
“Well, my understanding and interaction is very limited,” he says. “[But] I would love Tik Tok to give me a channel where I could make my iPad demos and create something with it immediately, and that could be something – but they won’t do that. And Apple won’t put a film-interactive-Garageband thing together, because once you’ve got that, I suppose you’ve got everything.” He shrugs. “They’re quite mean in allowing interpollination of creative ideas, when it’s quite clearly really, really great. So with Tik Tok, I would love if I could actually genuinely just make stuff that gave me joy, but I don’t really know anyone who has it.” He sighs dramatically. “It’s pretty lonely out here, in my non-social media world. I’m one of few, it seems. Or am I one of many? Am I the silent majority?”
I point out his presence on Instagram, but he is quick to correct me. “I’m not on Instagram, I’m not on anything,” he says, although concedes that he does allow posts to be made on his behalf (recent missives include a video of him unboxing the Cracker Island special edition, and a tender piano tribute to Trugoy the Dove). “Not that I’ve got a problem with it, it’s completely all right. It’s not me, though. It’s a sort of puppet relations…,” he says, trailing off. “I’m digging myself a hole here now, aren’t I? I can see it. It’s opened up in front of me, and I’m not gonna jump in it.” He laughs. “No, I just don’t have stuff [to say on social media]. You asked me about Tik Tok, and my answer is, to paraphrase what Hansel says in Zoolander, ‘I’m aware of it, but I don’t know anything about it, but I respect it.’ And also, there’s a very real possibility of excruciating embarrassment amongst my daughter and her mates, and my nephews and nieces, and all those. They’d just be embarrassed about me trying to be cool, and failing. And I mean ... they’re very honest.”
Having completed a world tour with Gorillaz last year, there are no tour dates in the calendar as yet – apart from an upcoming date at Coachella. There are, however, also a smattering of gigs with Blur (including one at Dublin’s Malahide Castle) to squeeze in this summer. “We’re working very hard on that,” he says, “so rest assured we will give it everything we have.” You get the feeling that Damon Albarn likes to stay busy. And despite 2023 marking 25 years of Gorillaz, he is not one to stop and reflect on their milestone anniversary.
“I mean, how does anyone feel 25 years later?” he says with a grin. . “It’s a long time, isn’t it? But the older you get, those lengths of time are just bestowed with so much more of an understanding of your journey. And I suppose the weird, wonderful and yet terrible thing about having a band that started right at the beginning of the internet is that we’ve kind of evolved with it. And it’s evolved with us. So now,” he says , throwing his hands up, “we’re part of the beast”.
Cracker Island is available now
