As they prepare to unleash their ninth studio album, Damon Albarn has opened up about the influences behind Gorillaz‘s new material.
The band – who released their most-recent LP, ‘Cracker Island’, in 2023 – will drop ‘The Mountain’ on March 20, with the project inspired by the death of Damon and bandmate Jamie Hewlett’s dads.
“Both Jamie and I lost our fathers,” says the group’s frontman (via The Sun’s Bizarre column). “We did two quite amazing, magical trips to India.
“India is a very interesting place to carry grief, because they have a very positive outlook on death. England is just really bad at dealing with death.
“In a way, I think this record is in that tradition of celebrating their lives.”
He continues: “I did things I’d never done before. I swam in the Ganges in Varanasi. I watched the bodies being burnt on the banks of the Ganges.
“In England when we cremate a body we don’t even look at the bodies, it’s covered up immediately and then it’s put in the fire, the little curtains close and that’s it.
“On the banks of the Ganges, every family is there with the body wrapped in a shroud and they’re burnt, and it’s going on everywhere. It goes on 24 hours a day and it’s been going on for thousands of years.
“I took my dad’s ashes there and I cast them in the river. It was very beautiful.”
The album’s cover art features the title in Devanagari, a script used to write the Indian Sanskrit language, and in another turn of events, the project won’t include the group’s iconic animated music videos.
Instead, Gorillaz are creating a one-off production, with Damon revealing: “We’re making a full eight-minute thing.
“This is why there are no videos at the moment, because it’s serious stuff. It’s really great that Jamie is concentrating on doing one animated thing.
“It’s a big amount of work, any animation. It’s kind of our Achilles’ heel because no other band has to spend that kind of time just to produce one small thing.
“So let’s make it a piece of art in itself and not really rely on it for the promotional aspect of things and let it breathe in its own way.
“I think fans are going to love every aspect of this record.”
