Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. Hope you are doing well. And today we have an exclusive conversation with the one and only Damon Albarn, co-creator of Gorillaz, of course.

The new record, The Mountain, is out now. I'm excited to talk about it. Hyped that Damon has taken another moment out of his time to talk to me about a new project, the legendary virtual band has put out.

A: Damon, I appreciate you coming through.

Damon Albarn: My pleasure.

Let's start with, if we can, just "The Moon Cave" short film and animated visual that you guys just dropped, because that's really one of the latest things to talk about.

That's why we haven't done any visuals before beforehand. That's why it's taken so long, really. Because I finished this record, to be honest with you, last May. It's just taken a long time to do it, but that's what hand-drawn animation requires. If you're going to do it properly, you know, we've had a big hiatus from that. But I feel like the combination of the two is where we're really our soul is. So I feel like we're back after quite a while. You know what I mean?

Well, I was going to say you and Jamie [Hewlett], consciously taking that short in a direction where you're trying to recapture that '60s Disney magic with all of those nods to The Jungle Book and the allegory of that. What do you guys feel like you learned creatively about specifically that style and that process, and trying to chase after it in the way you guys did?

Well, you can't rush it. It is the embodiment of slow art. But when it's done, it's so vibrant. It's a bit of a case of The Tortoise and the Hare.

Obviously, going in that direction, there's limitations to that medium as well as much as there is a lot of detail. Were there upsides and downsides to putting pressure on the process in that way, where you had to work within the boundaries that medium has?

I mean, it's totally more Jamie's part of the band. And for me, it was really just watching it from the hand-drawn sketches, and then it goes into this pool of animators that's huge, all drawing, drawing, drawing, drawing. And with this one, we had hand-painted backdrops, which were filmed. So, yeah, everything was very lo-fi in that sense. Totally analog.

Yeah. Well, I mean, moving away from the, I guess, the literal animation process itself, there is also, in just the storytelling of the piece, a lot of symbolism when it comes to the growth and change of the Gorillaz project itself.

It's at the center of what this record is about. This mini odyssey that Jamie and I took to India over a period of two journeys. And the themes that emerged from that. The first journey that we took was more sort of just trying to take everything in —made a bit of music, listened to a lot of music, went to some amazing kind of Indian theater, a lot of temples, a lot of museums. And then we came back, and in that interim period, both our fathers died. I suppose at that point, we were so overwhelmed by everything that happens when your father or your mother dies. It's a very profound step up in the individual journey, having no parent left. So, seeing the fact that they died, extraordinarily, within 10 days of each other, and Jamie and I are born 10 days apart. So there was this kind of geometry emerging. And I suppose the second trip —we went to the ancient city of Varanasi, which is on the Ganges. I scattered my father's ashes on the Ganges, and the whole experience, I think, really, that was where I felt, Oh, I know emotionally what this record is about... Yeah. And then it evolved from that. But it was a long process. And then a long process of waiting for Jamie's part of it to become manifest.

Given the trip and what you experienced there, and just, obviously, these massive life changes that led to-

You inevitably have. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I mean, of course. I just wanted to know, like, sort of- I am curious as to where you feel spiritually right now, because that's obviously a huge part of the album's core themes and stuff like that. Going into this album or years prior, in previous eras, would you say you were at all personally agnostic, deeply religious? Did that shift at all over the course of all of this?

Oh, well, I have a much more far-reaching relationship with India because my parents were really into aspects of Hindu spirituality when I was a child. And we lived in a part of East London that was predominantly Indian and Pakistani. Actually, my neighbors growing up from childhood were Pakistani. All the music, I mean, I said it a few times, but it's not... It is a truth that I listened to Rava Shanka before I listened to The Beatles, and yet when you think of musicians going to India, you always think of The Beatles. And in fact, this town on the Ganges, where the Beatles went to an ashram, and there's a bridge you go over, and it's all become quite touristy in a way. If you take a right, you go to The Beatles' ashram. If you take a left, you go to all the sundry other ashrams that have grown up in the wake of this weird connection. India is a place I would recommend anyone go to at some point. It is so extraordinarily ancient and diverse and colorful and beautiful, and really does give you a different relationship with the idea of death.

With that in mind, and you just brought up The Beatles, the idea of a musician going over there to gain some experience or point of view on something, it's almost become a bit of a storied thing at this point. Sure. And given some of the views of tourism that you saw when you were over there as well, was there any additional effort you needed to put in, given your recommendation, that people go there and experience it?

I didn't for one second go there wanting to retrace the steps of the Beatles, but-

Well, yeah, that's what I'm saying. How do you break through the-

No, no, no, but it's kind of extraordinary. There were a couple of occasions where I just felt, 'Oh, something's happening here'. I remember being in New Delhi, and I was just walking around, and I saw this tiny little shop that sold sitars, and I thought, 'Oh, that's exciting'. I mean, it was really tiny. So I opened the door, and I went in there, and there's this guy sitting at his desk, and these beautiful sitars everywhere. And we got talking, and then I looked, and there was a little picture, just a tiny little picture behind his desk. I said, "Oh, that's George Harrison." He said, "Yeah, my dad owned this shop before me, and he sold George Harrison his first ever sitar." And I thought, 'Oh, okay, right, well, this is happening anyway, whether I like it or not.' You know? But then he turned out to be the same age as me and born on the same day. So this is the thing about India. The cosmology of the whole experience is unavoidable. So, in that sense, I suppose I was meant to do this.

Meant to do. I mean, that was my concern. Was there a cynicism or a worry of cliché there? Was it a matter of breaking it or just embracing it?

To be honest with you, I've spent the last 20 years making a lot of music in Africa in many, many regions. So, actually, going to India wasn't that big a leap for me. It wasn't a huge cultural shock in any sense. I've been to a lot of places. Working with musicians who are outside of my own culture is not unfamiliar to me either. It's one of the amazing privileges that pop music has afforded me is that I can use it to further my understanding of the world and how important multiculturalism is. And yet again, we find ourselves realizing how important it is and how we need to solve our differences through understanding and not bombs.

Excellent point. Sort of talking about all of those differences-

I've actually been to Iran. I have actually been to Iran. I traveled all around it, and I actually found it another beautiful, beautiful country. So I'm a bit devastated that it's ended like this, but that's where we are.

Sort of in the spirit of the various collaborations that you've done over the years, at what point, given obviously the placements that you have on this record from legends who you've worked with, Bobby Womack, Mark E. Smith-

That kind of came later. In fact, we started-

Yeah, but at what point does this project become a tribute to past collaborators who have passed away?

Not so much a tribute. It's just it felt like, you know, when you're... Especially in Varanasi, where public cremation has been going on for 5,000 years every day, every night, you really are amongst the dead. It literally is the city of the dead. That's where I kind of came up with the idea that, you know, I wanted to bring those amazing dead musicians kind of back to life in this context. But I didn't think about it until that moment. And so, I got on the phone to London, and I was going, "can everyone start looking through all of the outtakes in the recordings?" And some of them go back a long way, you know, to get something from Proof. I also looked for something from Terry Hall there, but his tracks have been completely cleaned up because sometimes over the years, I've worked with very efficient engineers who just leave the strip clean and just have the performance on it. Others were not so tidy in their job.

And actually, that's where I got the most interesting stuff that I could use, because it was like 'I don't want to use something I've already used. It's just got to be if there are any outside things.' And then, some people, their estates wouldn't allow me. On "The Plastic Guru", the voice at the beginning it's actually a replica of Lou Reed's voice. It was Lou Reed, and then I was told to take it off. So, I didn't want to take what he'd said to me off.

Right. No, that's fair.

Because I thought it was really interesting.

Once you were piecing these performances and outtakes together, was it a matter of working them into music you were already tracking or building around what you were able to find to make sure that it made sense, because it was at the core of what you were doing already?

Yeah...

Or a little bit of both?

I just tried to do it intuitively. Someone like Mark E. Smith had loads of stuff left that I hadn't used when we did "Glitter Freeze". And I thought, well, there's enough here for me to try and- you know, his words are so interesting and weirdly so modern-sounding.

No, I mean, that's just the lyricist that he was.

He was a pretty lyricist, so why waste one word of Mark E. Smith?

No, it's true. I guess off of that, what I want to ask is, given the vibes that turned up on that track, which do feel in the spirit of "Glitter Freeze", and I'm not just saying because obviously they came from similar sessions, but I'm also thinking of some of the-

Yeah, it is. It is weirdly reminiscent of that-

On "The God of Lying", there also are these jaunty synth chords that feel almost like a call back to "Clint Eastwood" a little bit in a way. Are there moments on this album, musically, where you're very purposefully trying to reference back to past era of Gorillaz?

I suppose so, I mean, I'm kind of an anti-nostalgist, by principle, and I think the diversity of my work would stand true to that.

No, I agree, which is why it was a little surprising. Like, Gorillaz has always seemed like a very forward-thinking project, but sort of appreciating things that have happened that brought us to this point does seem like, consciously or subconsciously, part of this album's DNA.

I feel really, for me, this is the next record after Plastic Beach because the relationship between Jamie and I did deteriorate quite a lot. He moved to France, and we didn't spend so much time together. This time around, we spent a lot of time together. We traveled a lot. We talked from the beginning, we talked about what we were going to do, and that really felt like it used to when we worked in the 2000s with Gorillaz. So in a way, you could say we've had a strange hiatus since 2010. I know that sounds weird because obviously a lot of stuff happened profoundly in that time. So it is different. But yeah, I feel it's got a big theme. It's got a heart like Plastic Beach. And it's a record I kind of ended up producing myself.

I mean, there are a lot of fans who have observed the Plastic Beach sort of likeness as well. And again, people who have been following the band know that yours and Jamie's relationship has had its ups and downs, but like, bringing it back to that, to what do you attribute the fact that it's been enduring for so long? What continues to bring you guys back, even with these hiatuses? And I don't mean to just like, Gorillaz as a project. Obviously, that has come back numerous times, and we sort of get the gist of that. But what keeps you and Jamie connected despite these fissures that come up occasionally.

We're very, very old friends who love each other dearly and have a very similar worldview in many ways.

So even after all of that time, your perspectives on things-

We didn't stop being friends. We didn't stop being friends or working together. Just saying that really... Bands, we are a band. It's just that one of us is an animated cartoon, and one of us is a musician. But bands go through periods where they're not quite in the same room with each other, and then suddenly they find that it's... A band is a weird... My point is: a band is a weird chemistry. I've experienced it with other bands that I've been in. It's sometimes everyone's there, and sometimes they're not quite so much. And the music reflects that in a weird way.

No. And I was going to say, not only are they just not in the same room together, but also don't share the same views on certain things anymore. And it's encouraging and interesting to see that you guys still share that.

Yeah, I don't think we've ever stopped. We've been very close like that. We're already excited about what we're going to do next because I've definitely had a lot of time to think about it since I finished that. But yeah, we've got another big idea.

Thinking about some of the other collaborators on the album, and we've talked about this before, under Gorillaz, you have worked with and created some great tracks with a lot of UK music legends, I guess you could say, over the years. What made you tap Johnny Marr for this record? And what was he contributing to the album? And what was he bringing to the table that had you... That made him sort of irregular? Because he does crop up on the album quite a bit.

Well, Johnny's just got... When Johnny plays the guitar, it's very emotional. And for Jamie and I, you know, The Smiths were our band when we were 14, 15.

I imagine a pretty formative band for you guys.

Oh, my God. I mean, you have no idea the effect The Beatles had on people of my age in England. We all dressed like Morrissey. We all became vegetarians.

[Chuckles] Oh, my God.

We all danced quite camply together. You know what I mean? It was amazing, really. For me, along with bands like The Pixies, they were my bands at that particular time. Getting the chance to... I love working with him. He's a great musician. He's a great collaborator. What a privilege to work with him. To get him and Paul on the tune together.

Right, you had Paul Simon on as well on bass of course.

Yes, so if anyone who gets to see us at that big music venue in North London that we're playing, there'll be definitely... I can't name it, because it's another football team's stadium.

Specifically for... I mean, at what point did for you, Johnny, make sense as an inclusion in the album? Was it something about his guitar style and tone? Almost like that classic jangliness that made sense within the palette that you guys were creating here?

I think so. He's also thought a lot about Hinduism and knows quite a lot about it. So he's into the idea of reincarnation. So it's easy to work with him on a project like this.

Thinking of some of the spiritual themes of this record and the idea of passing on and an afterlife in general, where do you personally feel on that front currently, given this album? Is it reincarnation? Is it an afterlife for you personally?

Well, it's a void for sure. It's a complete transition to something else. You don't die and then get up and resume your life. So I think, yeah, it's anything you really want it to be, I think. I think there's just, I keep saying this, but when you die, you definitely become something else. So that principle, you can do whatever you like with that, really.

Is it something in your view that when you move on, is connected to the world that we know in our existing and now, and the people who we know, or is it more singular?

I think it's more abstract, just way, way more abstract than that, which doesn't really, you know, abstraction on that level doesn't sit really well with the commercial world.

No, for sure.

Because it's 'how are we going to monetize this?' [both laugh together]

Speaking of which, you guys went out on, obviously, a limb with this album in a lot of ways, not just with the fact that you've brought in just all of these different collaborators, this mountain of instrumentation, but also this record is being put out through your own label, Kong. That independence, did that change at all, the creative direction or process of this record in any way, or were there other reasons driving the-

I just completely lost all faith and relationship with the more corporate model. You know, I started off on a really little label called Food Records, which was, ironically, eaten by Parlophone. Then I had a very happy 1990s under Tony Wadsworth on Parlophone. And then it sort of just became more and more distant, and I knew less and less people. The whole culture of the music industry changed. So once finally all my contracts were finished, I was able to make a decision. Do I go back into that world or do we start again in our own sphere, really? And we decided that being independent was absolutely the best way to go.

Has that overall, all things considered, made things, I guess, in terms of releasing this record, creating this record, more difficult, easier?

The people I work with have been extraordinary. They've worked so hard. They've had to work twice as hard because we've done it in... We work with the same people, our management, all the same people, and people, distribution-wise who are a lovely family of independent distributors. Yeah, I'm happy at the moment. I have to wait and see how it reveals itself because it's all very new. But things seem to be going excellently. So really, I've only got myself to complain to that now.

I mean, just as a music fan, everything that I've been seeing from my side, it just seems like, regardless of what sector of the music industry that you're talking about, there's just been more consolidation than ever, just more being owned by fewer big wigs and so on and so forth. And it seems like everything is just concentrating at the top at an astronomical rate, whether you're talking about either the distribution platforms or even AI now.

Well, exactly. AI is just... I mean, I think there was a foolish moment where the big corporations thought AI was going to make their life easier and more money. And well, that is not the case. It's just going to... I don't think it's possible for AI to make soulful music.

I agree. But, and this is a very unfortunate but, I feel like all these corporations have invested so much money into it that they're basically like, 'Well, we're screwed if this doesn't pan out.' So they've got to find ways to shove it down everyone's throat so that they can try to struggle to make it work.

I hear you. I've been quite involved with AI because I've been making a score for a movie called Artificial at the moment, which is all about the founders of ChatGPT. So I've had a lot of time to think about it. Music and art should not be easy. Once it becomes easy, it's meaningless. In a way, it's the things you don't see or hear that make it art. You know what I mean, in a way. It's a weird intuition that the listener has that picks up on the journey that the artist has been through to make that particular thing with the tone of the voice, etc. You can't replace that.

It's a weird... I don't know. I feel like the only way it could be framed is like an entitlement. I feel like at no other point other than now, could you sell people on the idea that after putting in no effort whatsoever, you deserve to be an artist anyway, and here's a quick fix as to how to make it happen.

That is partly a symptom of platforms like TikTok, isn't it? Where people who..., and I absolutely got nothing against new platforms for new artists to emerge. I just feel sometimes it's a little bloated, what happens.

I'm sure that you, like everybody has been taken with maybe some of the images of figure skater, Alysa Liu, performing and absolutely killing it out there on the ice. But I don't see her and think like, That should be me. If only somebody could create a shortcut for me to become that talented of a figure skater overnight.

There's no shortcuts to being an ice skating champion.

Being a great artist takes just as much practice.

Yes, it does. It certainly does. I'm still really practicing, trying [chuckles] my hardest to... I love what I do, but I'm under no illusion that I'm anything other than like... I'm going to use a... I'm a novice. I'm maybe a little bit further than an obligate, but I'm still a novice.

Yeah, that's the thing. Like the practice, if you're truly good at it and you care about it, the practice never really stops.

Well, I kind of think, yeah, you should always stay a novice because it means you're always learning. That's a thing also about nostalgia, that if you start to lean too heavily into the glories, past glories, you maybe cease to learn.

I think another key theme that comes up in a lot of the lyrics of this record, at least from what I'm reading, It comes across as maybe a bit of maybe, not nostalgia, but maybe regret for maybe the person that you or the protagonist in a particular track has become, or maybe where things have ended up. I wanted to know, are these personal feelings?

I mean at one point, I'm a chased man. It's explicit.

No, it's very explicit. I just wanted to, I guess, do these feelings are these only extending to the project Gorillaz itself? Is it more a commentary on the state of the world, or is it more personal?

All three.

All three. At this point, what regrets do you feel like Gorillaz even have at this point? I think from an outside view, the fans view it as a pretty great and successful project.

Oh, yeah. No, I have no regrets with this record, and I have no regrets with the animated aspect of it.

Well, not the record, but just broadly across the entirety of the project's existence, I guess.

I think it's all a process, isn't it? Sometimes the process really shines, and sometimes it's a bit dull. It's quite hard to shine for 40 years every, every time. I try. I really do try, I promise you. But sometimes I'm maybe not quite as successful as I would like to be. But that's okay because, I mean, I did an opera with a… I'll try and pronunciate it, but Goethe, the great German writer, wrote Magic Flute Part II, which he didn't finish. He wanted Mozart to do it, but Mozart died, so he just put it in the cupboard, and it was lost for 200 years. So it's a 12-page fragment of The Magic Flute Part II.

Anyway, someone commissioned me to bring it to life. So I made an opera which was performed in Paris last year. But I mean, no one really knows that I did it, but it took me two years of really hard work to get to that point, which is a case in point. Everyone knows I've put this record out, but no one knows that I did that. But it doesn't matter to me because it's all about the process. It's all about learning. I just fucking love what I do.

One of the things that I've consistently loved about you and Gorillaz and anything else that you're involved in, again, you really are like a student and almost like a researcher.

I love studying. For me, that's my shit, really. It's research and study. I'm interested in the history of anything. Because it's just how did anything get here? It's just fascinating, really. Even the history of this T-shirt [points at the Zohran Mamdani t-shirt he's wearing] and his campaign using a mixture of different fonts from street signs and stuff. That's interesting. Everything has a process.

Right, and it also reflects the multiculturalism of the campaign, too.

100%.

Going off of something that you mentioned earlier in terms of the experience that you had going over to India. What I specifically want to dig into is the music that you heard and saw over there. I think due to streaming and the internet, there's this perception, but the more that I, as a music fan, consume this art form through digital spaces, I feel like the perception that you can hear it all through the internet and basically get your full of whatever music that you're interested through the internet. It's a bit of a false one. There's a truth to it, but I think it's a bit of a false one.

I still think books are very important.

No, they certainly are. I guess what I wanted to ask with that preface is, what did you hear and experience on the ground in India, musically, that you feel like your average person isn't going to get merely by just looking it up online? What is it that you came across and heard that maybe inspired you.

It's context.

Right, you're missing the cultural aspect of what the meaning behind the music is, which is part of the danger, and not to get back into this topic again, but it's part of the danger around AI, people generating their own tracks. From what I've seen as a practice, a lot of people making use of these generative platforms the most. All they really end up doing is just listening to their own music and not listening to anything else. And not only is that robbing artists of money that they could be getting from their music actually being purchased or consumed, but simultaneously, there's no greater communal meaning to what is coming out of those platforms. And as a result, nothing's really being conveyed or given to the listener in terms of what this music is trying to communicate or what world it comes out of or context.

Yeah. And yet there's still great music being put out there.

Oh, no, absolutely. Absolutely.

Because there is a resistance, and we're a very dissipated and diverse resistance, but we do exist, and we need to support each other, be militant.

I agree. I feel like the further things go along, it does require a militance of-

Yeah. I mean, that's going right back to bands like The Smiths. And The Specials. These incredibly informative- and The Clash, you know, there was a militancy there. It was cool for kids to be into politics.

Right.

You know, and have an opinion and make a change.

And imbue what you're doing with meaning.

Exactly. You could say, Oh, that's very nostalgic, Damon. I thought you were an anti-nostalgist. But I'm not asking for their ideas to be regurgitated. It's obviously got to be new ideas, new energies, new sounds. But that principle, principles are not like, nostalgic there.

You're not pushing the principle for its attachment to the past.

No, exactly.

You're looking for a new version of it. And you yourself are doing a new version of it. It's not like what you're saying on this record is like what The Smiths said on Meat Is Murder. It's not the same.

In part, what I'm saying is this stuff has been there for thousands of years.

No, absolutely.

Very old, really old [laughs].

Listen, I'm really enjoying the new album so far and appreciate you taking the time. And thank you for digging into the album a little bit with me and just the creative process and just-

You're a good one out there.

I appreciate you.

Appreciate you.

The feeling is mutual.