It’s very likely that you’re as sick as I am by now of just about every artist on the planet announcing that they will be releasing some kind of Christmas song or Christmas album or Christmas themed microwave meal.
Here is one that might actually be worth bothering with and I’m genuinely very excited about, possibly because it’s not got anything to do with Christmas other than the method of its release (all will be explained).
Since the beginning of December the band have been releasing free digital gifts to their fans via an interactive advent calendar. Videos of the band rehearsing (as can be seen atop this post), exclusive wallpapers, it’s all pretty cool stuff and worth checking out.
On the 24th day of the month, a video for a song on the album will be released, with the album being released a present to the fans on the following day.
The album was recorded in October and is to be titled The Fall. It was record on Damon’s iPad and how it’s going to sound is pretty much anyone’s guess.
Please visit the interactive advent calendar website to take a look at what the band are offering. It’s lovely to see more artists using the internet to interact with their fans in fun and intuitive ways, and Gorillaz really have done something exceptional here.
With Plastic Beach being such a hit for the Gorillaz, they have now announced the dates for their upcoming world tour. Starting on October 3rd, Gorillaz will be headlining a slew of cities and playing the new jams (and hopefully some classics) in a the tour they have dubbed as the “Escape To Plastic Beach” World Tour.
All cities and dates are still yet to be fully announced, but here are confirmed dates.
Gorillaz 2010 Tour Dates:
07/25 – Damascus, SY @ The Citadel
10/03 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
10/08 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
11/11 – Dublin, IE @ O2 Arena
11/12 – Manchester, UK @ Evening News Arena
11/14 – London, UK @ O2 Arena
11/15 – Amsterdam, NL @ Heineken Music Hall
11/17 – Birmingham, UK @ NIA
11/18 – Brighton, UK @ Centre
11/21 – Berlin, DE @ Velodrom
11/22 – Antwerp, BE @ Lotto
11/23 – Paris, FR @ Zenith
12/06 – Perth, AU @ Burswood Dome
12/08 – Adelaide, AU @ Entertainment Centre
12/11 – Melbourne, AU @ Rod Laver
12/16 – Sydney, AU @ Entertainment Centre
12/19 – Brisbane, AU @ Entertainment Centre
12/21 – Auckland, NZ @ Vector Arena
Tickets cost what they did for their last couple of dates, £45. That’s quite a lot but probably represents at least half-decent value for money, given that it’s Gorillaz – who are deserving of this status. These very tickets will go on sale at 9AM on Friday May 21, by which time we’ll hopefully have a government. Get them from here or here.
A tour supporting their new album ‘Plastic Beach’ means that the Camden Roundhouse will play host to Damon & Co.’s 2D extravaganza on the 29th and 30th of April, in a show featuring Damon Albarn, The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, Shaun Ryder, Bobby Womack, The National Orchestra For Arabic Music, Bashy, De La Soul, Kano and Little Dragon, along with new animation and artwork by Jamie Hewlett. The gigs will be the band’s first full UK performance since Demon Days Live at the Manchester Opera House in 2005.
Tickets are £45, but don’t grab your credit card just yet, they’re not on sale to the public until 9am on Friday 26th March, although you can sign up to be a Roundhouse member and get hold of some early bird tix. They will also be available at this time from www.livenation.co.uk and www.roundhouse.org.uk (all tickets subject to a booking fee). Subscribers to the Gorillaz fan club will have access to an exclusive limited ticket pre sale from 7.30am on Tuesday [ www.gorillaz.com/g-club - membership from £24.99].
You can also play a strange little point-and-click adventure game on the band’s website by clicking here. It’s clunky, but who knows, you might win something?
Since Damon Albarn and Jamie ‘Tank Girl’ Hewlett’s collaborative cartoon band Gorillaz were nice enough to give YouTube an exclusive on the video for their new track ‘Stylo’, YouTube have let their fictional bassist Murdoc Niccols curate a post on their Celebrity Playlist section. The mask slips a little bit, and Murdoc’s voice betrays him as an excitable 40 year old man, rather than a sharp-toothed ego-bass-maniac. Some of the videos are nice, like the clip from Jacques Cousteau’s ‘Silent World’, and others are revealing, like the dressing room rehearsal of “Hip Hop”, by Mos Def and my favourite colliery band/rap mashup group, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (who you should definitely check out on dino-space here). Anyway, here’s the clip – and no, Charlie Bit Me isn’t on there, odd, considering the teeth thing.
The new Gorillaz album, plastic beach is out next week, and the video for ‘Stylo’, the first single to be drawn from was posted on YouTube yesterday – featuring an El Camino driving, sunglass toting, Bruce Willis. Bruce proceeds to chase the 3D animated crew across the California desert in a Mad Max style chase ending in true Hollywood style. We can’t embed the video, but you can watch it here, and check out the intro to their Plastic Beach concept below:
This is obviously a good month for unexpected collaborations – first Wierd Al and the Pixies, and now Damon Albarn’s virtual band Gorillaz and the eccentric genius behind some of the biggest graphic novels of the last 30 years (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell <– Literally a massive book) , Alan Moore, on the libretto (the little book containing the text and story of an opera) for the new theatrical/operatic work curated by the Gorillaz, “Monkey: Journey to the West”. Based on the epic Chinese legend, and previously immortalised by the fantatic TV series:
This is obviously a good month for unexpected collaborations – first Wierd Al and the Pixies, and now Damon Albarn’s 