Gorillaz come back with power with ‘Humanz’ (Review)

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Gorillaz new album debuts new art.

Gorillaz has got the power with their new album Humanz bringing in dance-ready music perfect for any rave.

To state the little known obvious, Gorillaz isn’t actually a real band in the sense that its members are fictional. The band members–2D, Murdoc, Russel, and Noodle–are actually the musical stylings of Damon Albarn and studio musicians. Jamie Hewlett helped design the characters, including drawings of them used for album artwork, music videos, and other promotional materials. The alternative rock band has been around since 1998 with their kick off song, “Clint Eastwood.”

Each album contains a variety of rap, orchestral, techno, and other musical genres, making each album different from the last but with even more creativity and inspiration. With each album, Albarn aims to find new sounds and artists to collaborate with to create a different way of thinking.

In 2010, the Gorillaz had released their album, Plastic Beach, which featured artists such as Snoop Dogg and Lou Reed. Its flowing vibe kept fans on their toes, waiting and hoping that another album was in the works. While another record was released in 2011 with The Fall, it only featured a limited selection that didn’t satisfy as much as Plastic Beach had the year before.

Alas after 5 years fans began to lose hope until an announcement was made that there may be a new album in the works. Originally the new album was supposed to be released in August of 2016 but  the release date was repeatedly pushed back. Finally, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, fans got the first taste of the album with “Hallelujah Money,” featuring Benjamin Clementine.

“Hallelujah Money” contains sultry sounds mixed with techno vibes, which creates an interesting mixture of sounds that sucked fans in and caused a frenzy. The record dropped officially on April 28, 2017. Humanz was born and it was better than expected. Packed full of featured artists and vibes that remind one of Plastic Beach except on steroids.

In a BBC Radio 1 interview, Damon Albarn described the album with more specificity.

“It’s ‘humanz’ with a Z, which, simply put, [means] we’re in transition,” said Albarn. “We’re turning into something else. The album came from this dark fantasy that came into my head the beginning of last year, which was imagining the weirdest, unpredictable thing happening that changes everything about the world. How will you feel on that night? How will you go out – will you get drunk, will you stay at home, watch TV, talk to people?”

Albarn added, “I suppose we were imagining Donald Trump. The album’s not about Trump at all, but it was imagining that happening, in a way, that was our dark fantasy. And unfortunately it became reality. It’s a party record, a club record. But it’s got this weird darkness about it.”

Humanz includes featured artists Vince Staples, De La Soul, Danny Brown, and Kilo Kish, to just name some of the many artists that collaborated to make this exquisite album. Each Gorillaz album occurs to establish a message. With Demon Days released before the brink of a recession and Plastic Beach released with environmentalism ingrained in every song, Humanz is released through the panic of the Trump election. However, the album has nothing to do with Trump but instead is brought together to show a type of unity that the world should be experiencing instead.

The lack of unity in the album is almost to show the lack of unity the world is going through at the current moment, with the high-strung sounds of “We got the Power” to the cool tones of “Out of Body,” the album is a beautiful mixture of chaos and imagination.

Once again Gorillaz has hit the nail head on creating, once again, a great record that will surely be remembered.