GOING APE

Marking 25 years of Gorillaz, creators Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett explain how the industry-shaping animated band stays one step ahead, and why their quarter-century celebrations are "retrospective, not nostalgic"

- SOPHIE PORTER

It’s a daunting job broaching the subject of a 25-year milestone with two creatives who prefer not to “get into that world of nostalgia for too long”, as Gorillaz co-founder and visual artist Jamie Hewlett puts it. But even those most resistant to the past can’t help but get a little misty-eyed.

“Not to quote myself, but modern life is rubbish,” says Damon Albarn, referencing the title of Blur’s 1993 second album as he discusses the lie of the land for new artists today and the challenges which perhaps didn’t exist 40 years ago, from lack of small venues and demands to produce content, to the big industry behemoths that suck up resources without giving back. “I'm getting nostalgic now,” he admits. “It was truly a wonderful time, the 80s, to be a young musician. So many places you could play, and you could still go to art school. Has better music ever been made than the music made by slight outsiders from art schools?” The future is just the composition of everything that’s been before, “slightly decomposing”, he surmises.

The future is something Albarn and his bandmate Hewlett have always been striving for since the turn of the millennium when they launched Gorillaz. To celebrate 25 years of the band, they opened House of Kong, an exhibition at the Copper Box Arena in London, where they also staged a run of one-off gigs, performing their first three albums front-to-back, before closing with a ‘surprise’ concert. At that final show, they gave a full run-through of new album The Mountain, which was largely recorded in India and features guests including IDLES and Johnny Marr alongside a host of local Indian talent.

The roots of Gorillaz were planted at the end of the 90s, in response to a shifting pop landscape that was leaving Albarn and Hewlett somewhat jaded. Lad culture and Britpop had become tiring, with little room for experimentation, and MTV was full of manufactured acts at the peak of the boy band boom of the new millennium.