Album Title
Gorillaz
Artist Icon Gorillaz (2001)
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First Released

Calendar Icon 2001

Genre

Genre Icon Alternative Rock

Mood

Mood Icon Smooth

Style

Style Icon Rock/Pop

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Tempo

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Release Format

Release Format Icon Album

Record Label Release

Speed Icon EMI

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Album Description
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Gorillaz is the debut album by the British virtual band Gorillaz, released in March 2001. It includes the singles "Clint Eastwood", "19-2000", "Rock the House" and "Tomorrow Comes Today". The album reached number 3 in the UK, and was an unexpected hit in the U.S., hitting number 14 and selling over ten million copies worldwide.

Throughout the album the band experiments with many combinations of genres, including hip hop, rock, Latin, punk, dub, acid jazz, and reggae. The beginning of the song "M1 A1" features a successive sound clip from the movie Day of the Dead. The song "Dracula" features sound clips from Merrie Melodies' Transylvania 6-5000. The song "Slow Country" features a sample from The Specials' 1981 single "Ghost Town". A sampled loop from "In the Hall of the Mountain Queen" by Raymond Scott is repeated throughout the song "Man Research (Clapper)". The song's title is a nod to Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research.

It was recently revealed that the track "Starshine" has an alternate version, which features Luton-based rap group Phi Life Cypher. This version is not available on any releases, but it is available on the Phi Life Cypher SoundCloud channel and also on the video-sharing website YouTube.

All editions of the Gorillaz album feature an enhanced section that included screen savers, wallpaper and an autoplay, featuring a short movie which opens the user's internet browser to a special section of the Gorillaz website, http://murdocswinnebago.com, which gives the user full access to Murdoc's winnebago.

In 2004, the album was packaged with 2002's Laika Come Home in a limited edition box set as part of EMI's "2CD Originals" collection. Other songs saw a release such as the reggae-dub song: "Dub Dumb" which features British-Jamaican artist Sweetie Irie; it is available on the PlayStation 2 game MTV Music Generator 2 rather than on G Sides or the album itself. Other tracks include "Gor Beaten", which was another track that didn't make the album, however, it was available on one of the Gorillaz' members computers in Kong Studios.
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User Album Review
History is littered with virtual bands. The 60s had The Archies and The Banana Splits, the 70s had The Wombles and everything created by Jonathan King. But by the 21st century the concept was to become far more than a way of marketing pop to kids. Gorillaz is most decidedly a grown-ups' affair. At the point where Blur - bereft of guitarist Graham Coxon - decided to take a break and Damon Albarn was still grieving both band and a long-term relationship, instead of wallowing in a Lennon-esque 'lost weeekend' he took a creative left turn. Sharing a flat with friend and Tank Girl cartoonist, Jamie Hewlett, the pair decided to create their own bunch of reprobate, porno-loving oiks. Mis-Spelling the name with a 'z' in honour of the ultimate cartoon band, The Monkees, Albarn and Hewlett joined forces with San Francisco's hip hop genius, Dan 'The Automator' Nakamura and the band was born. Hewlett created the visual identities of 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel while Albarn added the soundtrack to their cartoon capers.

While Hewlett's graphics are amazing (the band's website was a paragon of all the stuff we now take for granted in terms of marketing a concept album), the album belongs to Albarn. His vocals litter all but two tracks and the palette reflects his divergent interests in everything from lo fi garage (5/4, Punk) to wonky hip hop (Rock The House), dub (Sound Check (Gravity)) early electronica (Double and Man Research: a tribute to Raymond Scott's Manhattan Research Inc.) and even krautrock (Starshine, M1 A1). Nakamura's touch lends the album a spooky bottom end and a host of stars willing to subsume their identities under the band's two dimensional front (Talking Heads' Tina Weymouth, Morcheeba's Skye Edwards, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and even Ibrahim Ferrer) mean that, while the diversity is a little dizzying, any sidestepping is always in safe hands. Plus Albarn's innate way with a tune meant that the tracks could handle any amount of mandatory remixing. The two-step version of Clint Eastwood still stands as a classic get-out-of-jail-free moment for any DJ stuck for a floor filler.

Regarded at the time as a successful if slightly self-indulgent hobby/holiday for Damon and his stoner mates, in hindsight Gorillaz holds up amazingly well: Better, in fact, than the subsequent Demon Days, where the higher celebrity count detracted from the album's coherence. It remains, primarily, some of the best stuff that Albarn's ever done.


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