The Fall

Gorillaz, indefatigable and persistent

Each time whenever a successful band’s front man decides to pursue a project of his own it results in one of two polar variants, either an incredible success or a complete failure. Of course everything depends on how wide and varied the artist’s range of musical and stylistic interests is, on how bold and ready to experiment he or she is. In case of Blur’s front man Damon Albarn little could foresee that his jokingly experimental flirting with hip-hop could eventually develop into what is now the most successful virtual band Gorillaz. The project was created a decade ago, and Gorillaz’ three albums including Plastic Beach, the creation which saw the light of the day last year, as well as a number of compilations do not only witness the members’ indefatigability and persistence but also the songwriters’ unquestionable talent for many of the songs became world hits in quite short time. The pause between the records D-Sides and Plastic Beach has lasted three years, and the fans have already thought that they would now have to wait for approximately the same hiatus to end before the new work is released. Yet, last October during the Plastic Beach supporting tour the musicians recorded their fourth album using only Albarn’s iPad and called it simply The Fall. The album became available for download from Gorillaz’ site on Christmas day, and in April the physical disc was released to feature Gorillaz’ classic cartoonish cover art.

The Fall is an experiment oriented at finding new sonic potential

The album The Fall can be hardly considered as Gorillaz’ full-scale recording but rather as another experiment oriented at finding new sonic potential. Unlike the previous works you are not going to find neither an impressive list of guest stars nor significant genre diversity here although some interesting personalities have taken part in the recording. Thus, the soulful guitar part at the beginning of rather heavy track Hillbilly Man is performed by Mick Jones, Paul Simonon’s bass guitar sounds on Aspen Forest, a volume electronic composition with melodious keyboards, and the mixture of blues, soul, psychedelica and folk Bobby In Phoenix has been co-written and performed with Bobby Womack. The opening composition Phones To Arizona is a great example of minimalist beat combined with extremely simple electronic sounds. The soulful ballad Revolving Doors unites the features of Enigmatic music, electronica and Albarn’s sad vocal outpouring, whereas Detroit is almost a danceable, really contagious and attractive number. Such tracks as Shy-Town and Little Pink Plastic Bags leave the impression of a pleasant space walk, the measured The Snake In Dallas conquers with the harmony of a stylish beat and melodious sax, and The Parish Of Space Dust is interesting for its starting from searching the needed frequency on the radio. One can easily remember the dreamy number Amarillo with Albarn’s charmed vocals from the first listening, and The Speak It Mountains reminds of an auto training recording with all its voices and sounds of nature. The album closes with Seattle Yodel, the forty seconds of folk a cappella singing.

The road fun

Despite The Fall’s being so different from all Gorillaz’ works in its content it is a full length LP in its form consisting of fifteen tracks lasting for more than forty minutes all together. There are no pauses between the tracks at the beginning of the album, the previous one gradually flows into the following as it often happens in DJ’s sets, while the songs seem to compete between each other in the beats’ intensiveness, unexpected voice or unearthly sounds closer to the record’s end. Damon Albarn and the company have once again proved that when one possesses a certain amount of boldness and ingenuity one can create ever new music pieces actually using any digital devices at hand for that. Certainly such recordings as The Fall will not be considered as something serious or sensational but for Gorillaz’ fans each release is important. The new disc serves to prove that the creative spirit never leaves Gorillaz even on the road, and it has simply shared its road fun with us. As for the new ‘real’ album it will surely follow in the nearest future, and the waiting will definitely not be boring thanks to The Fall.