pines

Jamie has one of the pine tree drawings in his bedroom at home. It was one that his wife particularly liked, so they framed it and put it on the wall. Some mornings, they find themselves lying in bed with a coffee staring at the artwork. Even now, they swear they can see things they’d never noticed before, lurking in the shadows or the shapes within the bark. Details that hide beneath. Pictures within pictures within pictures

Finally completing their first album in 7 years, Humanz. On the 19th of January 2017, the band released their first song after their five-year hiatus: “Hallelujah Money” featuring Benjamin Clementine, along with its own music video.

‘We really need them right now.‘ stories. Noodle has grown up and become a woman (“which is something cartoon characters tend not to do,” Jamie says) and 2-D has transformed from a delicate wallflower into an extremely confident adult. In fact, on their record, The Now Now (released in June 2018), 2-D’s confidence has become a problematic arrogance. He has dominated interviews this year, answering questions with fired-up but vague declarations that make no sense under inspection. The band also hired Ace of The Powerpuff Girls fame to temporarily replace Murdoc as bassist while he was serving time in prison, and released their album, The Now Now.

It’s funny, a few people have said that, which obviously gives me a warm glow all over to know that people are happy to have four cartoon characters back, and that, in some way, it helps. It’s strange. I never would’ve imagined that. All the Gorillaz albums have been a little political. We’ve always been trying to say something, but we’ve kept it hidden between the layers, not going on our soapbox and preaching what we think. But there’s always been a message in there, and the best delivery is to to let people discover it themselves. I think this album is probably sounding like the most political to date, and I think that’s because we can’t help ourselves. Everything’s just gone to shit in the last couple of years, so it’s coming out in the work. It would be impossible not to recognize or have feelings about the way the world has changed and the sort of shit that’s going on; hence the name, Humanz. It’s an appropriate title for an album because it’s sort of a question. The Z on the end of Humanz puts me in the mind of artificial intelligence, robots, programming, conditioning, brainwashing and control, so it’s kind of asking the question: Are we still human? Or are we humanz? Are we aware of what’s going on? It’s up to us to make a change, to make things different, to do something. Sometimes we need to wake up a little bit.

Cracker Island is the eighth studio album by English virtual band Gorillaz. It was released on the 24th February 2023.

During July 2022, the band announced that they had begun recording their next album in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. During this time Murdoc became increasingly interested in the occult, and eventually founded a cult focusing on the supernatural, dubbed The Last Cult. The rest of the band weren’t too keen but didn’t think much of it.