Post Modernism Gorillaz

Ollie Dennis

Gorillaz pay homage to many artists in their songs, they use samples from
different artists in all of their songs and put their own unique style on
them. They do this in a respectful way to the artists, we can tell this as
firstly we know Damon Albarns personality and its unlikely he would
disrespect an artist. In the Blur vs Oasis situation the Gallaghers
constantly mocked Albarn and his band however from footage that we see
from the press, it seems Albarn tried to stay out of it.
The Gorillaz song Clint Eastwood uses a sample from Snoop Doggs No
Guns Allowed. In their Glastonbury set in 2010, Snoop Dogg makes an
appearance and performs the verses in the song. This is Albarns way of
paying respect to Snoop Dogg for letting him sample his song.

Homage

Gorillaz are not a real band, they are animated characters that play
animated instruments, however the samples from other songs are used to
create the effect of the animated characters creating new songs.
When they perform live, they are holograms on stage with the track being
played in time with them instead of Damon Albarn performing himself with
his band.
For this band, their image is just as important as their sound. Due to
them being made up characters it meant they could choose any image
that Albarn and co wanted. As they are considered by many to be the
first virtual band, the characters must be interesting and look unique.
Each character has an interesting story of how they came to be in the
band.

Simulacrum

The Gorillaz are an animated band. On their first tour of live shows, the
characters appeared on stage as holograms much like when Snoop Dogg
performed at Coachella festival with a hologram of Tupac. On this tour, the
live band played behind a giant projector screen which covered the whole
stage, on which was projected various visuals and images created by
Jamie Hewlett, the sketch artist for Gorillaz.

Performance

Gorillaz started off with Damon Albarn (Blur) and his old flatmate Jamie
Hewlett. Albarn would write the music whereas Hewlett drew up the
characters and storyboards. Albarn had songs recorded on his four-track
which he brought into the studio, then they would take the good parts e.g.
a drum loop, and use it as a starting point for a song using the software
Logic to sample songs and mix them. For some songs such as Clint
Eastwood, there is both a drum machine and live percussion using
obscure techniques such as shaking a plastic bag full of metal drum lugs.
Some members have been designed to take the image of a real artist for
example the singer called 2D takes the appearance of Damon Albarn, as
he created and stars in the band. The bassist known as Murdoc takes
the image of a young Keith Richards.

Creation

The Gorillaz debut single Clint Eastwood was named after the actor with
the same name. This is because the song sounds similar to the theme
music of The Good The Bad And The Ugly which was a film that Clint
Eastwood starred in.

Intertextual References

On the Gorillaz website, there is a game which can be played involving a

place called Plastic Beach which was the title of their album.
When doing interviews with radio/TV etc, the animated character is on
screen however the person who does the voice of the character is talking
behind the animation.

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