Gorilaz

Shit is weird, man.
If they couldn't get a cartoon going at the height of their popularity, what are the chances they can now?

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>What happened that caused the last two phases to be devoid of animation?

Gorillaz has lost its soul.

Its over ten years too late.

If they released the series in 2007, the internet would have exploded.

I unironically loved The Now Now.
I'm willing to admit Humanz was bad but sound-wise The Now Now was kino

Budgeting and Jamie working on other stuff on his own that he was more interested in, from what I've heard.

I love the Now Now. Very easy listening.

Oh, 100%, The Now Now was a perfectly solid album. That's a fairly luke-warm take.

The REAL hot take is Humanz was a decent album thematically, and more of the tracks were good than were not.

They stopped making hit records

they were more ambitious back then. success made them complacent

i wish they would go back to working with producers again like they did with Dan the Automator and Danger Mouse on Gorillaz and Demon Days. Albarn doing most of the musical work has gotten stale.

A music video is supposed to be advertising for the album, Phase 1 & 2 were released when music videos still saw some play on tv. Phase 3 is where things get rocky. In 2010 YouTube is still relatively small, social media's not as big as it is now, so it's hard to really get word out that they have a new album coming out. Secondly, artists don't make the bulk of their money through music sales, usually touring is were the money is at, and the Phase 3 world tour flopped hard. Also they went over budget on Stylo and they were never really able to recover. Phase 4 & 5 semed more laid back, no real reason to make music videos when they have other ways of promoting the album now.

TNN was good without being amazing. Souk Eye and Humility were the obvious stand outs, and the rest was easy to listen to. I liked about 50% of Humanz and hated the other half. Neither come close to touching Demon Days or Plastic Beach

Another Gorillaz Danger Mouse album would literally kill me

Thank god I am not the only one. I've never understood why Humanz was considered so awful. While I wish they had more Gorillaz only songs, I still like most of the songs on the album. When it comes to songs-per-album that I find enjoyable I actually like more of the songs from Humanz than I do from their debut album.

I get why people don't like it since it does compositionally feel more like the gorillaz are the guest on the album rather than the other way around.
Not inherently a bad thing, but not what most were expecting going in.

Some felt the politics were too forward (they've always been there but with Humanz they could be seen as on-the-nose), but a lot of it was because for most of the album the guests were the main focus with 2D popping up here and there in the background.
Only a few songs had 2D as the main one singign, leaving Gorillaz feeling like guests in their own album.
That's why Now Now was considered a breath of fresh air.
Not quite a return to form, but Gorillaz were at least the main focus on their songs again.

Can you blame us? He was literally made to fuck.

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They were pushing the concept of an animated band hard during the first phases. By phase 3 they were well-known and had a dedicated audience, and after they went over budget so hard during plastic beach they pared it right back going forward. No need to push the concept anymore.

Every day I mourn the 2D Ace convo before Tranz that could have been.

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Plastic Beach was the most kino phase.

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So is Gorillaz just western vocaloid idolshit? I never really took the effort to understand it.

I think Gorillaz pre-dates Vocaloids. Or at least Hatsune Miku. They are a virtual band in the sense that it is presented as being composed of cartoon characters, but is actually the brain child of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, who write the music and create the art respectively. It differs from Vocaloids in the fact that the vocals are not computer generated, but provided by Albarn through his cartoon avatar 2-D. Albarn and Hewlett use the project to maximize their creative freedom, and Albarn likes to experiment with different genres and collaborators. Most fans don't know much about the cartoon characters, and they don't need to, but there is quite a lot of lore that's been revealed through the music videos, now defunct websites, in-character interviews with the voice actors, an out-of-print lore book, and even a recent ARG.

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I didn't have a problem with the political messaging in Humanz so much as type of music they were playing. Maybe I just don't like Soul, R&B and Disco as much as I've liked the other stuff they've done.

I also miss being able to listen to a track and hear the characters in it. Phases 1 and 2 had real instruments. I could hear Noodle on guitar, Murdoc on the bass, and Russel on the drums. Now that everything is synthesized the characters don't feel like they have a purpose anymore. 2D is the only one who has any presence on the albums at all. It should just be called Damon Albarn's Fusion Album Featuring Collaborators.

It was.

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I have thing for big blacked-out eyes because of him.

Blank, empty sockets aren't a look that just anyone can pull off.

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>also miss being able to listen to a track and hear the characters in it. Phases 1 and 2 had real instruments. I could hear Noodle on guitar, Murdoc on the bass, and Russel on the drums. Now that everything is synthesized the characters don't feel like they have a purpose anymore.
This, so much.
In the earlier phases you could hear each individual character's contribution and that's part of what made their music so special.
With Plastic Beach they were kinda getting away from that, but I could deal with it since it still sounded really good, just different, and tied into the story with Murdoc basically scrounging whatever he could to get the album in production, and all the collaborators were helping Murdoc search for Noodle.
Beginning with Humanz EVERYTHING became electronic and, besides 2D, the characters basically had nothing to do.
And even then he was pushed to the background for the most part.
Like, what's even the point anymore?

best album best phase, the game was clunky but it was really entertaining. shame that it's gone

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Money

It'll always have a special place in my heart.