From the very beginning, Gorillaz were a completely different kind of rock band. The virtual band formed by Blur frontman Damon Albarn and artist/illustrator Jamie Hewlett in 1998 mixed experimental indie rock tunes with four quirky characters created by Hewlett — singer 2-D, bassist Murdoc, keyboardist Noodle and drummer Russel Hobbs — for a unique presentation that put the visual on par with the musical.
It was high-concept in the extreme and while the tunes have consistently made things interesting thanks to wide-ranging collaborations with everyone from Del the Funky Homosapien, De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, Bobby Womack and Lou Reed to Kali Uchis, Pusha T, and, on their latest album, The Mountain, a collection of Indian and Syrian world music performers, pulling off the high-wire act live hasn’t always been a slam dunk.
Take, for instance, their widely panned hologram performance at the 2006 Grammy Awards, where they played their signature Billboard Hot 100 No. 14 hit “Feel Good Inc.” and joined Madonna for a duet on her song “Hung Up” using the Musion Eyeliner System in a set that kind of fell as flat as one of Hewlett’s comic book illustrations.
“It looked amazing on TV,” Hewlett told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe on his Zane Lowe Show on Monday (March 30) after the host opined that the holograms looked “awful in the room,” but “kind of worked on TV.” Albarn concurred, saying that the TV broadcast was a “win” and “very good. It was brilliant on TV. But awful in the room.”
Lowe recalled thinking at the time that he was blown away by the idea that the technology could have allowed the band to do “12 shows at the same time all around the world,” with Albarn saying that that was the idea before ABBA had the money to properly do a hologram show that slapped with their long-running ABBA Voyage virtual concert residency in London.
“It was too expensive and the technology hadn’t been developed well enough that in a live scenario, you had to have the music very low because the invisible screen vibrates when you turn the bass up and the drums and then your animations go [vibrating sound],” added Hewlett. “When we were at the Grammys and they came on it was really quiet. And people were talking they didn’t even know the show had started because it was so quiet.”
The duo also talked about their connection to retired masked techno super duo Daft Punk, with Hewlett recalling that both acts broke through around the same time in the late 1990s. And while the incognito Frenchmen behind Daft Punk — Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo — had literal masks to hide behind, Gorillaz fans all knew exactly what the already famous man behind the lead vocals looked like.
“It definitely felt like, ‘oh okay they’re doing what we’re doing,’” said Albarn about the incognito element of both group’s acts. “But they had the advantage of not having a face of Britpop trying to hide. I was at a disadvantage.” Lowe joked, “victim of your face,” teasing the Blur singer about his looks, adding, “we’ve been saying that for 30 years now.”
The wide-ranging conversation also touched on the new album, their 2010 Glastonbury performance, the difficulty of doing in-character interviews early on in their career and their abandoned plan to make a Gorillaz movie.
Watch the Zane Lowe interview with Gorillaz below.
