A very loose follow-up to my last post...
Yet another music recommendation from yours truly for whatever it's worth...
All this time I've been waiting for a new album from the Gorillaz and that problem has finally been resolved...sort of.
Basically Damon Albarn (the former Blur frontman who, along with composing the majority of their material, decides what goes into the collective musical flavors that is Gorillaz) got back together with Jamie Hewlett (the visual artist behind Gorillaz) and made a "circus opera" based on the legendary Chinese novel Journey to the West which, for this production, has Monkey preceding the title. Not exactly what I wanted but the results far surpass my skeptical expectations upon hearing about it.
There's some music up already and I've watched bits and pieces of the play and I guess circus opera is right. The best thing that Gorillaz ever did was mix together tons of varying music genres into one and not make it sound completely schizophrenic and their interpretation of a Chinese opera (seriously, all the singing is in Chinese) seems to brush shoulders with some of the more "soft" stuff that was on their last two albums. I like it and it's so damn irresistible I have listened to those 4 songs on their MySpace profile multiple times. There's no doubt in my mind that when the album gets released stateside I'll be first in line to snatch it up.
If you want to learn any more about this weird artistic project then my best bet would be to just head to their MySpace profile...
http://www. myspace. com/monkeyjourneytothewest
Hey if the Olympics team behind BBC (a network I throughly endorse and love) thought the material was good enough to commission them for an Olympics theme of their own then it just may be deserving of your attention...easier too if you just like anything Gorillaz and understand why it's some of the freshest stuff mainstream music has going for it today.
All this time I've been waiting for a new album from the Gorillaz and that problem has finally been resolved...sort of.
Basically Damon Albarn (the former Blur frontman who, along with composing the majority of their material, decides what goes into the collective musical flavors that is Gorillaz) got back together with Jamie Hewlett (the visual artist behind Gorillaz) and made a "circus opera" based on the legendary Chinese novel Journey to the West which, for this production, has Monkey preceding the title. Not exactly what I wanted but the results far surpass my skeptical expectations upon hearing about it.
There's some music up already and I've watched bits and pieces of the play and I guess circus opera is right. The best thing that Gorillaz ever did was mix together tons of varying music genres into one and not make it sound completely schizophrenic and their interpretation of a Chinese opera (seriously, all the singing is in Chinese) seems to brush shoulders with some of the more "soft" stuff that was on their last two albums. I like it and it's so damn irresistible I have listened to those 4 songs on their MySpace profile multiple times. There's no doubt in my mind that when the album gets released stateside I'll be first in line to snatch it up.
If you want to learn any more about this weird artistic project then my best bet would be to just head to their MySpace profile...
http://www. myspace. com/monkeyjourneytothewest
Hey if the Olympics team behind BBC (a network I throughly endorse and love) thought the material was good enough to commission them for an Olympics theme of their own then it just may be deserving of your attention...easier too if you just like anything Gorillaz and understand why it's some of the freshest stuff mainstream music has going for it today.