It’s easy to forget, in this modern world of AI and deep fakes; personalised algorithms and Chat GPT and access to everything, everywhere, all at once, not just how revolutionary Gorillaz were when they first emerged back in 1998, but the sheer scale of imagination it took to create the world’s first fully operational, multi-dimensional virtual band.
Dreamt up by Damon Albarn (then, already railing against Blur’s Britpop peak and taking the group in less commercially technicolour directions) and his illustrator flatmate Jamie Hewlett, Gorillaz were a feat of pure, boundless creativity. Unless you count kiddy-centric cartoon creations like Alvin and the Chipmunks, nothing like them had ever come before. Its four varyingly human-to-primate ‘members’ - 2-D, Murdoch Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs - had full personalities and back stories. Their imagined HQ, Kong Studios, gave them a world in which to roam whilst cleverly bridging the gap between fiction and fact. The records that would turn Gorillaz’ human counterparts into Glastonbury headliners and global phenomena weren’t physically made at Kong, but they were very real, and – obviously – very, very good.
