Shanon Cook
CNN
(CNN) — Is it really a band? Is it some kind of weird joke? Or is it the product of a group of bored celebrities going through an experimental phase?
Whichever, Gorillaz, a virtual band with fictitious cartoon characters, is the latest music phenomenon to come out of Britain and beat its chest all the way to the U.S. top 40.
Blur vocalist Damon Albarn has traded onstage romps for being the voice behind a blue-haired, black-eyed, toothless brat named 2-d. The singing 2-d is one of four of Gorillaz’s warped-looking characters. His buddies are Murdoc (also a singer); Russel (a rapper); and Noodle (the guitarist).
But the release and imminent success of the group’s self-titled album, with its twitty, witty lyrics and original sound, is not necessarily the band’s biggest accomplishment.
Gorillaz, you see, has even performed live.
Um, how, you might ask, does a cartoon quartet do that?
Perhaps we’d best leave that explanation to Jamie Hewlitt, the human behind “Murdoc” and the band’s illustrator.
“Basically what you have is a huge cinema screen with a live band playing behind the screen,” he told CNN’s World Beat in a recent interview. “And onto the screen we flash all kinds of images to go with each individual song, and then the back of the stage lights up and you get the silhouette of the band.”
So there you have it.
Performing ‘lo-fi’
During its live, debut performance at London’s Scala theatre in March, Gorillaz shook its animated act on a 20-foot screen while a very curious audience wondered if the musicians were going to make an appearance.
It wasn’t until the outline of Albarn’s baseball-capped head eerily appeared through the screen that the “lo-fi event” earned credibility as something more than just a cartoon screening.
The band’s repertoire included the hit “Clint Eastwood,” which combines Albarn’s voice with hip-hopping from Del Tha Funkee Homosapien (aka Russel). The drone of the harmonica gives the song a spooky sound that complements the cultish, dark images appearing in the act.
The Scala performance drew reactions ranging from complete amusement to absolute ridicule.
The Guardian newspaper described the act as “monkey business which (Albarn would) be best off chalking up to experience.” Music 365 suggested the band is out to “subvert the pop music industry,” while World Pop put the foursome down to being a “cool,” “celebrity-fuelled craze.”
The Telegraph made a valid point about keeping the musicians hidden — “Who wants to look,” it wrote, “at ugly blokes playing guitars anyway?”
‘Playing … leaping … jumping’
“It’s an experiment,” says Hewlitt, who also did the illustrations for Tank Girl. “And each show we do we improve and we’re just sort of waiting for the technology to catch up with us so that we can have holographic, animated characters on stage playing, leaping in the air (and) jumping in the audience.”
And while Gorillaz are set to become more, er, real, it seems the musos who hide behind screens have set their sights on becoming even more invisible.
They want to see quirky 2-d, Russel, Murdoc and Noodle sitting in on media interviews by themselves.
“Maybe a year or so from now the animated characters will be sitting here in this environment,” Hewlitt says as he waves his hand around the room.
“Hope so,” said park-life devotee Albarn. “It means we can go out shopping and sit in the sun.”
