Tag Archives: gorillaz album

#1252: Gorillaz – Sound Check (Gravity)

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‘Sound Check (Gravity)’ is another song from Gorillaz’s 2001 debut album. I say ‘another’ because it doesn’t feel so long ago that I was writing about the last one to appear on here. I’ll try my best not to repeat anything, but don’t hold it against me if I do. Just a coincidence that two of the songs I like on the LP begin with the letter ‘S’. Being the 16-track record Gorillaz is, with ‘Sound Check’ being the eighth on there, I think the song’s placement and general tone is meant to make it out as the epic closer of the album’s first half. Got these heavy dub-record scratch breakdowns and (synthesized) violins. Meant to really heighten the dramatic atmosphere of it all, even though the song isn’t arguably about anything much at all.

If you look at ‘Sound Check’ in a structural sense, which I guess I do sometimes on here, you can say it’s split into three different sections. You firstly get the “Graviteh-eh-eh-eh” verses, the instrumental breaks where the dubby bass guitar comes in with the record scratching, and the “ah don’t ‘pon me down” verses. Some websites list the latter part as the choruses. They seem like the least chorus-like parts of the song. Damon Albarn’s doing a thing that he does throughout the album, which is switching up his vocal style, really exploring parts of his voice that he never would with Blur and singing actual words mixed with a bit of gibberish which have some meaning and sort of don’t. There’s always a very fine melody associated with them all, though.

The main puzzle I’d always had with the track was regarding the sample that’s used during the instrumental breaks. Once I read that the person in that sample was saying “I’m gonna rock this rigging”. And it sounds like that, thought it was a pretty valid deduction, so I’ve been singing it that way for all this time. But before writing this, I just did a little check to see how the lyrics are noted on various websites. One of the first few results that came up was a Reddit post asking about that sample lyric, and someone straight up posted the actual source. You hear it about 27 seconds in. So it’s actually just “I’m gonna rock this pla-ace”. It’ll take me some time to get used to that. But that’s one question solved that I don’t have to think about anymore.

#1221: Gorillaz – Slow Country

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Moving out of the city and into the countryside is a theme that Damon Albarn explores a lot, at least that I know of from listening to the stuff he does with Blur. The earliest I can think of is on ‘Chemical World’ from Modern Life Is Rubbish in ’93. There’s a b-side of the band’s called ‘Get Out of Cities’, which is pretty self-explanatory. And in 2003, he sings about the country having a hold of his soul and having no town to hide in in ‘Good Song’. I guess there’s something about the natural landscape that interests him. And I’m also gonna guess that it was on his mind again when he was casting off his Blur shackles for a while at the start of the century, started Gorillaz with Jamie Hewlett, and wrote a song called ‘Slow Country’ that was included on that project’s debut album.

I don’t think it’d be a wrong thing to say Gorillaz gave Albarn a sense of freedom that he probably wasn’t able to fulfil, being in a band with three other guys for a good part of a decade up to the point of Gorillaz’s inception. And with this reinvigoration, he laid out bare his interest in dub and hip-hop that no Blur fan would have guessed existed. ‘Slow Country’ is a track indebted to the former, led by a thick bass line and formed by a generally spaced-out soundscape, reinforced by the windy sound effect sampled from ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials. A lot of the lyrics on the Gorillaz debut, I feel, were mostly written around the music, written more for the sake of feel rather than a narrative standpoint or having a sense of direction. Albarn also found that he could sing in any way he wanted, switching up the timbre of his vocals plenty of times throughout. It’s no different on ‘Slow Country’. Sometimes I think any lyrics site that has the words to the track on their pages don’t have the correct ones, just because of the loose and playful way he enunciates the words.

From what I’ve come to understand after hearing it for so many years is that ‘Slow Country’ may be about Albarn getting out of the city, no matter how attractive it might be with all those vices and all, and focusing on upping his funds and generally getting his life sorted out. It’s quite serious stuff. But with this new Gorillaz project, he could disguise it in a way that made it off-kilter and quirky. He didn’t have to deliver his words as earnestly and could instead joke around and have fun a little. Instead of electric guitars, there’ll be a piano playing a childlike melody. Musical breaks with drifting synthesizers that make you feel like you’re floating in space. And of course those unforgettable “noot noot” vocalisations that remarkably sound very similar to those of everybody’s favourite animated penguin.

#1095: Gorillaz – Re-Hash

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Well, I don’t have so much of a personal connection with Gorillaz’s first album as I do with, say, Plastic Beach. That debut album was released back in 2001, when I would have been five, but I do remember seeing the videos for ‘Clint Eastwood’ and ’19-2000′ at the time and being confused by the former and sort of more aware of what was going on with the latter. I didn’t come round to hearing Gorillaz in full until 2010 or so. Plastic Beach was, then, the new album, and everyone knew about Demon Days – think I got that for my birthday that same year – so it only made sense to complete the trilogy by downloading it off the random mp3 sites that you could go to in those days and hearing where it all started.

‘Re-Hash’ is the opener. Where it all started. Commercially, at least, I think I read somewhere that the very first song made under the Gorillaz name was ‘Ghost Train’. Though you all understand where I’m coming from. I feel like I read somewhere that the song is meant to be a veiled criticism of the simplicity and repetitiveness of the general music scene that was going on around 2001, when people like Britney Spears and N*Sync and other manufactured pop groups were existing. This was something that irked Damon Albarn, and was one of the main reasons that he and Jamie Hewlett created Gorillaz in the first place, and so it only made sense that he mimicked the thing that was so “hot” at the time. Hence why ‘Re-Hash”s dub bassline and drum pattern barely changes throughout the song, or why the lyrics in the second are the same as the first. And the chorus is made up of only one line, “It’s the money or stop”, another phrase that is repeated to high heaven. But in that is where the meaning lies. It’s all for the money.

It’s songs like this that make me miss the Gorillaz of old times. I’m sure I’ve said this before in the previous Gorillaz album-related post many moons ago, but this clean pop direction that Albarn’s taken the project to in recent times is one that I couldn’t care less about. You could expect something different from each upcoming Gorillaz album 15-20 years ago, which somehow immediately worked, but since coming back in 2017, things haven’t clicked with me as immediately as they once did. The trip-hop, dubby era of Gorillaz is one that I have a lot of heart for, even if people will die by the sword and say Demon Days is the certified classic. I mean it’s all right, I do like it myself. But I really like this.

#804: Gorillaz – Man Research (Clapper)

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Gotta say I miss the times when Gorillaz made music like this. Damon Albarn’s taken his virtual band into quite poppy territory, but there’ll always be those featured guests that still give the material a bit of its edge. I prefer the Gorillaz tunes where Albarn never sounded the same on each track. Where he would barely enunicate any of the words he would say against a strange experimental soundscape, or use some production effect to make his voice sound different. A prime example of the former occurs in today’s track, ‘Man Research (Clapper)’ from the band’s debut album from 2001. Now you’ll either just get your standard Albarn vocal with that effect that makes it sound like he’s talking from a loudspeaker. But anyway, let’s talk more about the song.

What is ‘Man Research (Clapper)’ about? I don’t think anyone truly knows. You can search up the lyrics online. I’ve seen them and, though they somewhat resemble what Albarn could be saying in this song, I don’t think they’re correct. The song samples ‘In the Hall of the Mountain Queen’ by Raymond Scott, which is on his album Manhattan Research Inc. That is where the Gorillaz song takes its name from. That still doesn’t get us any closer to the song’s message. I could only say that I think ‘Man Research’ is connected to ‘Clint Eastwood’ because both songs include the lyric ‘I got sunshine’. It also comes straight after ‘Eastwood’ on the album. And I’ve always thought that song was about drugs. So, I guess that’s what it boils down to, everybody. ‘Man Research’ is about drugs. See you and good night.

I’m just kidding. I’ve never thought about the song’s meaning that much. I need something to discuss on here. Anything with a strong melody’s alright with me. Although Damon Albarn sounds a bit far gone on this one – if that was his intention, he succeeded – the way he ‘sings’ alongside that incessant kick drum always sounded good to me. That ‘yea yea yea’ chorus is very memorable, whether you like it or not. For the last minute and twenty seconds, Albarn become slightly unhinged with every ‘yea yea yea’ repetition to the point where it sounds like he’s either in pain while delivering his vocal or even crying. It’s a bit of a freakout. And it’s those types of strange moments from Gorillaz that I miss. They’re not so strange anymore.

My iPod #193: Gorillaz – Clint Eastwood

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Hi everybody.

Just came back from my presentation evening where all my former colleagues and I received our A-Level certificates. It was really nice. I was dreading going to my old school – just because, well…. it’s kinda crappy. But seeing all my friends and catching up was cool. All in all, a good night was had.

That is why today’s post has come quite later than usual. It’s “Clint Eastwood” by Gorillaz, their first…. let’s say ‘proper’ single ever. You may also know it as the ‘Sunshine in a Bag’ song? Ring a bell?

I can barely remember actually being five/six and seeing this on the TV. Just about. But it’s one of those tracks you’ve heard in an advert, or one which your friends mentions in passing and you instantly know what they are talking about.

The music video did leave me confused on whether Noodle was a boy or a girl. I later found out that she was indeed female, but I do not know how her design in this video was meant to show that.

The track also features Del the Funky Homosapien, the rapper with the song in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. He and Damon Albarn collaborated quite a bit during the early years of the last decade.