"Humanz": New Album Gorillaz

Lev Gankin - about how Damon Albarn has returned to the future

On April 28, “Humanz” was released - the new album of the Damon Albarn project Gorillaz, recorded after a seven -year pause in the group’s activities. And immediately on a large scope: there are two dozen tracks, and among the accomplices-both young hip-hop talents like Vince Steaples, and well-deserved pop veterans like singer Grace Jones. At the request of Medusa, Lev Gankin tells how Humanz appeared, what he is good - and what is the place of Gorillaz in the modern world.

"BATH!" -Murdok exclaims carnivorously, a drawn-drew Satanist of the Gorillaz group in the third minute of the clip for the song “Saturnz Barz”. The bath is located in an enchanted house, on which the quartet of Multi-Multi musicians came across to his misfortune: in a moment, Murdok will climb into the water and the hell will begin-the participants of the ensemble, among other things, will attack the giant one-eyed boat and the speaking piece of pizza.

Previously, they, of course, fell into such alterations, but, presumably, managed to wean from this: in the last seven years, nothing was heard about Murdok and his friends. After the Plastic Beach album and the tours followed by Gorillaz, the puppeteers - Damon Albarn and Jamie Hughlett, who, respectively, for the musical and visual series - diverged about their business. It was rumored that a cat ran between the gorillas - Hughlet, they say, was upset that his creative contribution was underestimated. However, having rested from each other, the partners met and decided: to be Reunion - to be.

Before the release of the Humanz album, the disposition was perhaps for Gorillaz - and specifically for Damon Albarn - not the most advantageous. Shortly before that, he reunited the Blur group, now he pulled Gorillaz from the dusty box, and, apparently, the second coming of the project The Good & The Queen on the nose. It might seem that on the threshold of the 50th anniversary, Albarn finally went about the favorite business of veterans musicians-a journey through the waves of his memory. There would have been nothing criminal in this, if Albarne’s reputation was not his reputation: he has established himself as perhaps the only “people of revival” in the entire British trail of the 1990s, a station wagon capable of the most unexpected-and invariably exciting-creative maneuvers.

After all, he also invented the sound of Blur several times, then plunging with his head into a purely English psychedelic, then bothering from independent guitar music from behind the ocean. Then there were Gorillaz experiments, who brought the musician the long-awaited commercial success in the United States: pop-up with a solid smack of Daba and hip-hop, white melodies multiplied by black GROUL (Blur Blur Blur, not without reason, called the pale-faced Albarn "the most black-skinned person in Western London"). After - Afrogita and Chinese pentatonics, operas about alchemists and studio sessions in Kinshasa.

For the time being, Albarn categorically did not want to enter the same river twice, preferring to rafting in risky, unfamiliar streams. In this regard, the Reunion Parade, open Blur and continued Gorillaz, caused some fears.

As a result, “Humanz” weightily proves that these fears can be discarded. The first full-fledged song on the record is Ascension with an energetic ramp of the 24-year-old California Vince Stapiplza; At the time of the release of the previous Gorillaz album, this artist did not even think about a musical career. The ironic rhyme to “Ascension” seems to be “Let Me Out”, recorded with the participation of Vinca nearly 80-year-old namesake, Gospel-singer Mavis Stapipls, however, on average, Albarkan partners on the Humanz disk are younger than his generation, or even two. The main hero of the song “Saturnz Barz” (the same, about the enchanted house and the bath) is the fresh Jamaican Dance Hall-star Popkin, and in the “Andromeda” the musician uses MC from Virginia, known under the pseudonym Dram “I grew up on the songs of Gorillaz,” said Dram-but not concepts He had that Damon was a dude from Blur until my DJ told me about it. I asked: “Blur”? Then he put this song to me: Vuuu-huuu ( “Song 2”-approx. “Medus” ), and I am-Ah, yes, of course. ”

In a word, the current partners of Albarn sometimes vaguely imagine who Blur is and what their new friend is famous for, but this does not bother him a little - and even vice versa. Gorillaz never lived the past. “Humanz” - both meaningfully and acoustic - the album is not about yesterday, but about today and tomorrow; The smaller DRAM and everyone else knows about the past, the better. The plate is almost entirely composed on an ipad - a device that has not yet been invented when Gorillaz recorded their first records. There are no songs here in the texts of the songs, and there are references to actual political events: for example, military campaigns in the Middle East or Donald Trump’s victory in the American elections. The US President, however, is not mentioned - it would be too clumsy for Albarn - but all participants in the recording, in his own words, at the negotiation stage were invited to imagine his triumph and describe the “world in which everything you believed turned out to be turned upside down.”

In general, the installation on the drive and Kach worked: at least the first half of the “Humanz” album sounds like a continuous incendiary disco. Unlike many colleagues, Damon Albarn reacts to a hostile political agenda with unharmed Philippics and not bitter complaints, but rather at the manner of Pushkin’s Valsingam: “Light the lights, pour glasses, drown the minds, and, brewing feasts and balls, we glorify the kingdom of the plague.”

As a skilled curator - namely, such is his main role on the album - Albarn, it seems, did not press on invited artists, leaving them a rather large space for maneuver. “Humanz” both in sound and structure are hip-hop plate, on which a bright guest cameo is provided in almost every track; Nevertheless, it was not a question that the guests simply read a verse or two to the finished track for the sample. All of them-from old friends like De la Soul to the rising stars like Rʼn'b-singer Kella-Albarn made full-fledged co-authors, and when the sad Parisian Kloshar Benjamin Clementine appeared in the studio with a meditative security after American politics, not only did not prevent him from preventing him, but also released this song with the first tester to K plate.

At a leisurely pace and a nimble, tragic mood, it is close to her perhaps another track - but perhaps the best (and the only one in which Gorilllaz did without outside help): “Busted and Blue”, a melancholy ballad in the spirit of the classic things of Albarn.

However, they finish here anyway on a major note. “Love your neighbor,” calls Albarn in the final track “We Got the Power” with a choir with his once worst enemy Noel Gallaher. The past, as was said, is forgotten - in the marvelous new world of the album "Humanz" there is no place for old squabbles.

But there is a charming four of animated characters in it - Jamie Hughlett, it seems, may no longer worry about this. What seemed a disposable trick, an witty response to the redundancy of celebrity culture has been working miraculously for almost 20 years. The most popular comment under the video "Saturnz Barz" on Yetube is not directly related to music. He looks like this: “What is this musical genre? - BATH!" At the time of publication of the material, the dialogue was like 32620 times. The bathtub invented by Hughlett has turned into an inconsistent Internet meme, already registered, including the Know Your Meme portal. And although in one of the songs with Humanz, Damon Albarn is sad about the excessive importance of the Internet in modern life, the best evidence of the endless relevance of Gorillaz, in truth, is still looking for.

Lev Gankin