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June 02, 2005
gorillaz :: demon days
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Damon Albarn's experimental phase has been pretty divisive; his detractors would have you believe that he's gone into Sting/Peter Gabriel/Paul Simon mode, what with his world music and rhythm-based excursions and incoporations. Others, like me, hear a genuine creative expansion from an artist whose talent allows him to sound entirely comfortable among new sounds, deploying them to a personal artistic end rather than as wall hangings or window dressing.
Demon Days is really the 4th oddball Albarn disc. It all started with the playful, enjoyable beat-heavy first Gorillaz release - in partnership with Dan the Automator and Kid Koala, among others. Then came the excellent, little-heard Mali Music and its direct descendant, the out-there Blur album Think Tank, a culmination of his newer instincts, and a record that I thought would have been much more widely celebrated had it come without the Blur brand, made by unknowns.
This new Gorillaz, to me, plays like a set of b-sides and remixes from Think Tank. It consists mostly of sparse, fractured beats and deep dub bass courtesy of new collaborator Danger Mouse (who shocks with both his breadth of taste and his restraint, given his history as a hip-hop producer and sample collagist) overlaid with the misty instrumental textures found on Think Tank as well as the anomie of its melodies. It's darker than you might think given the cartoon cover and pop-star-goes-electronic back story.
There are plenty of collaborators here, including several nods to hip-hop in the persons of Booty Brown from Pharcyde, De La Soul, Roots Manuva, and the ubiquitous MF Doom. But the disc is still dominated by a sound that is unmistakably New Albarn.
I think this disc is a real grower, and I'm probably calling it too early. My feeling is that it is often very good but almost never truly great (though "Dirty Harry" pretty much is); it ends up being an alluring collection of ideas, with highlights and perhaps one or two too many throwaways (do we really need the Dennis Hopper monologue?). However, if you've been happy to hear Damon Albarn's trips afield, you might find yourself reaching for Demon Days more than you'd planned. Some reviews are calling this record "fantastic" (Popmatters) and "brilliant" (Uncut). I might get there myself.
Dirty Harry (ft. Booty Brown) (mp3)
El Mañana (mp3)
Posted by borrowed_tunes at June 2, 2005 11:36 PM
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