Gorillaz return, entertain with collaborative album

My Aim is True: A Music Column: African-inspired music generates buzz; Fleck to bring these beats to Bowdoin

In early March, Béla Fleck, one of the most accomplished banjo players in the world, will perform at Bowdoin accompanied by a group of African musicians. According to Bowdoin's Web site, the concert is meant to be a showcase of Fleck's latest project, "Throw Down Your Heart," the result of numerous collaborations with African artists that occurred during Fleck's quest to find the "African origins of the banjo."

My Aim is True: A Music Column: Spring sounds ring loud in Javelin album ‘No Más’

People that have gone through a Bowdoin winter are funny: the moment the thermometer reaches 50 degrees, it's flip flops and T-shirts for the rest of the school year. This year the transition from winter to spring felt especially abrupt; the sun, warm weather and reappearance of life on campus was a shock to my senses. To make things even better, I had recently found the perfect album to go along with the warmth of spring.

My Aim is True: A Music Column

Gorillaz return, entertain with collaborative album

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Tyler Patton

Columnist

March 5, 2010

What do Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music have in common? In the past few years, they all received a call from Damon Albarn to feature on the new Gorillaz album that released this week.

Plastic Beach, the new project from the former Blur front man, is rife with unlikely collaborations. Aside from Snoop and Reed, the album features guest spots from Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Mos Def, De La Soul and Bobby Womack. Even Paul Simonon and Mick Jones get in on the action for a Clash semi-reunion. With all the collaborations the result has got to be a gimmicky mess, right?

That would be true if Albarn weren't the organizer of this seemingly schizoid endeavor. Since their eponymous debut in 2001, Albarn and comic book artist Jamie Hewlett have made it very clear that Gorillaz would not be a conventional musical project. The first "virtual band," Gorillaz are a kind of post-modern enigma of a band. Musically, they inhabit the middle ground between trip-hop, rap, and electronica. Their first big hit, "Clint Eastwood," featured the relatively unknown and underrated Del tha Funkee Homosapien and is one of the best songs of the past decade.

On the new record, Albarn continues the Gorillaz's unconventional streak and the result is their best album yet. With all of the guests, one would expect the album to be all over the place but it actually plays like a coherent electronic orchestra. This is largely due to the collaborations with the aforementioned Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music and contributions from sinfonia ViVA and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. On "White Flag," a minute-long orchestral introduction suddenly becomes a bass-bumping beat with Kano and Bashy exchanging rhymes over the top. These strange juxtapositions are found throughout the album.

"Stylo," the lead single, features magnificent, chunky production that recalls New Order (think "Paradise"). While it features one of the best beats on the album, "Stylo" is also the one place where collaboration seems unnatural. When Bobby Womack bursts into the song about two minutes in, it seems awkward and clashes with the downtempo vibe of the rest of the track.

On the rest of the album, though, the risks pay off. "Superfast Jellyfish" featuring De la Soul and Gruff Rhys is a tight, head-nodding hip-hop track that could easily be a jingle in a cereal commercial. The title track (featuring Simonon and Jones) is a fantastic psychedelic rock song that vaguely recalls Dark Side of the Moon. "Empire Ants" and "To Binge," the album's two collaborations with Swedish band Little Dragon, showcase Albarn's uncanny ability to know when an artist will fit in seamlessly with his vision.

A few days ago, the video for "Stylo" surfaced on YouTube. It features the virtual band speeding away from an intense Bruce Willis, showing that Albarn used his connections even for all aspects of this project and although Plastic Beach has nothing that compares to "Clint Eastwood," it is a highly creative and listenable album.

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