Gorillaz have returned to the public consciousness with a bang in the past couple weeks. After announcing their own Demon Dayz festival in the U.K. (set to feature all the artists included on their upcoming album Humanz), the Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett-masterminded animated group released four new top-notch tracks from the new album last week, complete with animated visuals. Then, after announcing their first North American show in years at Festival d’été de Québec in Quebec City this summer, the group sent shockwaves through social media when they were announced as a headliner for this summer’s Outside Lands alongside The Who and Metallica.
We just thought we were lucky to get new music from them; no one thought we’d get all this.
In an interview with Zane Lowe, Albarn expressed how comfortable he was with completing Humanz, revealing there are still 40-45 tracks that didn’t make it onto the record. “I can stay in the game for at least another 18 months, I reckon.” You can listen to the segment below:
While Damon Albarn sorts through the music, his other creative half Jamie Hewlett is working on a ten episode television series to supplement the artwork, tour visuals, merchandise, and “other things he never imagined when Gorillaz was born,” according to this interview with Q magazine. The interview also reveals that the U.K. Demon Dayz festival prototype will also make its way to Chicago.
In talking about the spelling of Humanz, Albarn explains, “It’s amazing what you can do when your band members aren’t real people. These characters are a conduit for everything we want to say but if we got up and said it, it wouldn’t have the same impact. Humanz is not a political statement about Trump — it’s about a world in which he could get elected. Where are we as a race? Why haven’t we grown out of this? Putting the Z on the end is not a hip-hop statement, it’s more like an android Z. Are we human beings or just humanz? What the fuck is wrong with us?”
The full album is out on April 28th.
[via CoS]