THE musician and the visual artist . . . two lives shaped by shared experience and creative endeavour.
Damon Albarn was born on March 23, 1968, and eleven days later, on April 3, his chief collaborator, Jamie Hewlett, came into the world.
In 1998, after bonding while sharing a flat, they dreamed up virtual band Gorillaz, a vehicle for wild flights of imagination.
Fronted by cartoon characters 2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Russel Hobbs and Noodle, Gorillaz have blurred musical styles, crossed generations and involved numerous nationalities in their songs for more than 25 years.
“We’re the Alan Whicker of bands,” declares Hewlett, in reference to the globe-trotting broadcaster.
“More Michael Palin,” interjects Albarn. “He’s nicer and also very funny.”
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In 2023/24, sad events conspired to take Damon and Jamie in a new direction — to that vibrant, teeming country of 1.4billion people, India.
The result is the Gorillaz ninth album, The Mountain, with its title inscribed in Devanagari script on the cover.
Performed in five languages — Hindi, English, Arabic, Spanish and Yoruba — it features a host of stellar guests, most living but some no longer with us.
The musicians come from different corners of the globe, India, Syria, the US, Argentina, Nigeria, and, of course, the UK.
Albarn says: “The original impetus came from quite a tragic story. We were in Belgrade finishing off a video when Jamie got a call from Jaipur in India. It was from his wife Emma, saying, ‘My mum’s in a coma’.”
Hewlett picks up the story: “They had been there for a month at an Ayurvedic retreat (a system focused on balancing mind, body and spirit).
“They had packed their suitcases, had called a taxi and were just on their way home when my mother-in-law had a stroke.
“She was rushed to the closest hospital in Jaipur — it’s all about speed when you have a stroke.”
So on December 4, 2022, Hewlett arranged to fly from Serbia to India and so began “eight weeks of daily hospital visits hoping she might wake up”.
Sadly, his mother-in-law didn’t make it, leaving Hewlett to reflect: “It was a very traumatic experience but, in between those visits, we were able to explore Jaipur.
“I just fell in love with the place. The people were so warm and I discovered that the whole subject of death is viewed from a very different perspective.”
He’s alluding to the fact that Hinduism sees passing away as a natural transition — a temporary pause for the eternal soul rather than a final end.
Hewlett continues: “When I was in the hospital, people were visiting loved ones who were dying.
“There were tears but, at the same time, there was a feeling of celebration in the belief that they were coming back in an another form.”
This got Hewlett thinking about possibilities for Gorillaz, his visual playground.
“Damon was in touch with me the whole time I was there,” he says. “When I came home, I said to him, ‘We need to go to India together to see if we can do something’. A year later (after Blur’s epic reunion), we were off.”
Albarn says: “I saw it as the perfect opportunity to give the whole world of Gorillaz a nice, new kickstart. I was just waiting for an excuse to go there.
“I grew up in Leytonstone where my school was 30/40 per cent Asian. My dad was very into Indian classical music so I was genuinely listening to (sitar player) Ravi Shankar at the same time as The Beatles.”
Albarn also saw visiting India as a perfect opportunity to spend quality time with Hewlett.
“We enjoy each other’s company,” he says. “We’ve got an awful lot in common and our taste is very similar.”
Hewlett nods in agreement and adds: “We thrive on finding ourselves in different cultures — and there’s so much to take from a place like India, even if somewhere as big as that can’t be grappled with immediately.”
And Albarn again: “The first time you go there, you’re just so bewitched by the place.”
With their sights set on a Gorillaz album drawing on Indian music, two more devastating events were to bring the pair even closer together — and the project into even sharper relief.
In July 2024, some time after an initial foray to the subcontinent, Albarn’s dad Keith died. Ten days later, Hewlett lost his father.
For Albarn, a return to India offered him a degree of solace. He journeyed to the ancient city of Varanasi to scatter his dad’s ashes in the Ganges. Keith had been a respected artist, designer and teacher who loved Indian culture.
“Grief manifests itself in so many ways,” says Albarn.
“You don’t overcome it but you can learn to accept it and going to Varanasi definitely helped.
“This place has been inhabited for 5,000 years and it’s where families have burned their loved ones every day, every night, for all that time.
“The fire rituals are wonderful, so poetic — almost like an inhalation and an exhalation.
“The idea that people pause at sunset, light fires and sing is so beautiful. Harder to do in northern Europe where cloud can bruise the spirit!”
Albarn goes on to describe, “something I learned, which is a useful life lesson,” from taking a loved one’s ashes to the Ganges.
“Don’t stress yourself by thinking too much,” he affirms. “At moments like that, don’t think of anything — empty your mind.
“Emptiness is a beautiful thing and there’s infinite possibility within it. We mention ‘the void’ a lot on this record.”
For Albarn, the album’s starting point was his gorgeous melody, which morphed into the title track and opener, The Mountain. He calls it the LP’s “signature tune”.
The finished piece is blessed with sublime playing by Ajay Prasanna on bansuri, a traditional bamboo flute, with Anoushka Shankar, daughter of the late, great Ravi, on sitar.
Albarn says: “Once I met Ajay and he’d played his bansuri, I thought, ‘I’m never letting this gentleman out of my sight again’. He’s an amazing person.
“You give him a melody and he turns it into something godlike.”
As for the contribution of Anoushka, whose mastery of the sitar echoes the work of her legendary father, he says: “I could hardly imagine the idea that I was going to play with one of the Shankar family.”
Hewlett says: “If you’ve never been to India, you find yourself mentally transported there just by this song. It’s almost like the beginning of a movie.”
The Mountain is the first of several tracks to feature the voices of the dear departed, in this case maverick actor and film-maker Dennis Hopper.
Elsewhere, there are contributions from one-time Gorillaz collaborators who have since died — soul singer Bobby Womack, Dave Jolicoeur of De La Soul, The Fall’s Mark E Smith, rapper Proof and Albarn’s long-time associate, drummer Tony Allen.
GORILLAZ – THE FILM
TODAY on YouTube at 4pm, Gorillaz are revealing an eight-minute film, The Mountain, The Moon Cave & The Sad God.
Directed by Jamie Hewlett and THE LINE Studio, it shows animated adventures as the band journeys across India.
Damon Albarn says: “For anyone interested in Gorillaz, this will be one of their favourite things ever.”
Their inclusion is a poignant way of saying: They may have gone but they live on in some way.
Albarn says: “I think of a mountain as a manifestation of reincarnation because, if you think about it, a mountain is formed through chaos and tectonic shifts. The change in everything creates something new.”
The Mountain gave Hewlett all the inspiration he needed to begin conjuring up the exotic, beautifully realised imagery, which is so crucial to this Gorillaz project.
He says: “I guess the biggest challenge for me was that we were dealing with a subject that is more grown up than in the past.
“How should the characters behave because usually there’s a lot of sarcasm and jokes?
“So I was thinking about how to tell the story in a respectful way but also maintain a level of fun.”
Hewlett admits: “We didn’t rush into this one — a lot of work ended up going in the dustbin for both of us, musically and visually, until we got on the right course. But when Damon gave me this piece of music and called it The Mountain, that was the starting point. Everything opened up for me.”
Of all the myriad guests on the album, perhaps the most notable is 92-year-old Asha Bhosle, one of the most revered singers in Hindi cinema, who sings on the shimmering, life-affirming The Shadowy Light.
Albarn says: “She’s one of the most important living Indian singers — and maybe even the best.
“Everyone in India knows her music, she’s had hundreds of billions of streams.”
And Hewlett adds: “Damon managed to get her to sing for us in her apartment in Mumbai. He used his charm and she was very comfortable with him.”
If India is central to The Mountain, no Gorillaz record would be complete without sounds of various cultures.
The Happy Dictator, with eccentric American duo Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks providing the chorus, began life in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, a dictatorship in central Asia.
“That’s where I got the idea,” reports Albarn. “I went there with my daughter. “We have a father-daughter holiday every year, and we’ve been to North Korea, China and Turkmenistan.
“This year we’re going to Georgia. We share a real passion for the remnants of communism and the possibility of future socialism.”
So what’s Turkmenistan like and why call a song The Happy Dictator? I venture.
Albarn answers: “It’s a very barren place, almost entirely desert, with this pristine modern city of Ashgabat, which is made almost entirely of white marble.
“Being in that society, I realised that they are given no bad news. They had no news at all, really.”
Another fabulous song is Damascus, which rekindles Albarn’s abiding love of Syrian music.
GORILLAZ – THE TOUR
THE Mountain tour kicks off with two warm-up shows in Bradford on March 13 and 14, before heading to arenas.
Manchester on March 20, is followed by dates in Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Cardiff, Nottingham, Liverpool, Belfast and Dublin.
On June 20, Gorillaz headline Tottenham Hotspur Stadium with support from Sparks and Trueno.
You may recall when he helped assemble the Orchestra Of Syrian Musicians in London while civil war raged in their home country.
For Damascus, Gorillaz employed the services of Omar Souleyman, one of the country’s pre-eminent singers, alongside American rapper Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def).
With Syria still in state of flux after the toppling of the cruel Assad regime, Albarn says: “I wouldn’t go there at the moment but I did go to Mali (a favourite destination) in December, even if I was absolutely told not to.
“I didn’t find it anywhere near as dangerous as everyone says it is and I would definitely go back.”
This feeds into the notion that Gorillaz has no borders, that it’s an example of how multiculturalism can break down division and strife.
“Not only is it the right way forward but it’s the most important way forward,” says Albarn.
“Isolationism and the idea of demonising people from other cultures is not correct — and it’s profoundly dangerous.”
So that’s why we hear the freewheeling rap of The Roots’ Black Thought on a track like The Empty Dream Machine, which also harnesses the guitar power of Johnny Marr and more sitar from Anoushka.
And why Albarn’s expressive tones are matched with Argentinian Trueno rapping in Spanish and telling words recorded by American rapper Proof not long before he was shot dead in 2006.
Let’s not forget that love and loss loom large on this record.
On Casablanca, again featuring Marr as well as The Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Albarn sings: “I don’t know anything that feels like this/I don’t know anything that hits like this.”
Simonon has been a member of The Good The Bad & Queen with Albarn and the late Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen.
You hear Allen intoning, “We are ready, let’s go,” on The Hardest Thing before Damon, clearly with his father in mind, sings: “You know the hardest thing is to say goodbye to someone you love.”
Albarn says, “We definitely put a lot of love into this record,” and Hewlett signs off with, “There’s more to come. We’re not finished yet.”
It’s anyone’s guess where in the world those Gorillaz masterminds will pitch up next.