After two decades of music video, no one complained about a concert with an unseen band. Albarn and other musicians performed behind a screen while video projections were shown. Gorillaz also made a development deal with Dreamworks for a movie spinoff, but abandoned it after three years. They have adventures in the band's video clips, and are about to be marketed as toys. There's square-jawed, Satan-touting Murdoc on bass a laconic, spiky-haired lead singer called 2D a young Asian girl named Noodle on guitar and the hefty African-American Russel on drums. Hewlett devised characters: the band as an alliance of subcultures. Albarn started knocking together music on drum machines and analog synthesizers, and Mr. Hewlett shared an apartment after each of them had a longtime romance break up. "They solved one identity crisis but helped create another one." "They helped sidestep the inevitable problem of being an aging art-school rocker," he said with a chuckle. Albarn can be persuaded to drop the mask and admit that, yes, he is the mastermind of Gorrilaz, an invented band whose debut album has sold six million copies worldwide. Usually, Gorillaz present themselves as a two-dimensional band: four cartoon characters drawn by Jamie Hewlett, who created the punky, unstoppable comic book and movie heroine Tank Girl. Albarn started a new, plural identity, as Gorillaz. "Then, having transferred that conversation to something permanent or impermanent, you just whitewash over it and start the next one."Īfter a decade as the leader of Blur, one of England's most celebrated bands of the 1990's, Mr. "I quite like the idea of covering the walls with the conversation," he said as he showed a visitor around the studio. Albarn was working on the second album by his alter ego Gorillaz, "Demon Days" (Virgin). Nearby, the phrase "Dark Is Good" has one "O" crossed out, making it "Dark Is God." These messages loomed directly in front of the mixing board as Mr. LONDON - ON the wall of his recording studio, Damon Albarn has written "Uncertainty Leaves Room for Hope" in large black letters.
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