Plastic Beach: The Masterpiece That Almost Ended Gorillaz

this video is brought to you by nebula I find failure interesting I think most people do there's something compelling about hearing about something going through trouble whether or not that's a good trait to have it's a pretty universal one there's a reason why we care so much about controversies and downfalls and why these sorts of videos and stories flood the internet in our general culture but an important thing that often gets let out of this discussion is that failure can mean many different things and as much as I enjoy failures that just fell on their face at every conceivable opportunity I do also have to preserve a special place in my heart for those that fail and succeed at the same time the gems that somehow cross the line into both categories enter Plastic Beach for those not in the know Plastic Beach is the third studio album from the virtual band gorillas the big release for the era of the band known as phase three it released in 2010 and since then has gained a reputation for being one of the best albums of that decade and for some the high point of gorilla's entire career this era introduced a lot of fan favorite songs some amazing music videos and a [ __ ] ton of side content and lore that in raptures fans to this day it's hard to view Plastic Beach as anything but an astounding success which is really interesting when you remember that it was the era that almost destroyed the gorillas project entirely to call Plastic Beach to steal a term from another YouTuber a train record is wrong it didn't receive a critical lampasting it didn't permanently harm the reputation of the parties involved and it clearly has enough of a fan base and cultural respect that it's just not the case but it and phase 3 as a whole almost brought the band to an end and the after effects of the Plastic Beach era are still felt to this very day how can an album be both an artistic High Point as well as a potential career Ender well it's the intersection between art ambition and money and it's something that has fascinated me for years so join me as we tie our boat to the dock and revisit Plastic Beach gorillas is theoretically a side project by musician Damon Albarn who you might know from blur if you follow britpop and artist Jamie Hewlett who you might know as the artist of Tank Girl if you're a weed smoking lesbian the idea for the band came about the way most good ideas come from shitty roommate situations despite not really getting along initially the two we're sharing a flat after big public breakups and we're spending their time watching MTV and [ __ ] hating it this was the late 90s early 2000s which was an interesting era for MTV as it was in the Golden Age of the 80s and early 90s but it wasn't yet the reality TV waste plan we know today music theoretically existed on the channel but this was a time where popular music was facing a strange identity crisis the dirt and grime of grunge had been co-opted by the record labels and turned into the very dry corporate art that Grunge was supposed to be against the most popular pop acts at the time were boy bands and girl groups who received a lot of pushback for being singers brought together by record labels rather than real bands who played real music and wrote real song songs in general there was this sense of the music scene being extremely manufactured which gave Albert and Hewlett the idea of taking that to the extreme and making a band that is 100 manufactured and composed entirely of fictional people Hewlett would design the members while Albarn would compose the music for them thus came gorillas an animated band represented by four characters their singer and frontman 2D who is theoretically the stand-in for all Barnes all of Auburn's singing vocals are Judy's vocals he's meant to be the classical pretty Rock poster boy front man much like how Damon was with blur though he's way more like a soggy wet pathetic noodle speaking of noodle there's the guitarist noodle a 10 year old Japanese girl who according to lore arrived in a FedEx crate at the gorillas HQ with amazing guitar abilities and named after the first word she ever spoke then we have the drummer Russell an African-American man meant to signify the hip-hop side of gorillas and initially had a prominent story plot about being possessed by the spirit of real-life rapper Dell the funky Homo Sapien finally we have the bassist Murdoch a green angry vulgar and monstrous satanic British man meant to represent old prominent Rock and metal icons Murdoch deserves a special mention for being kind of absurdly popular in the fandom you know how a lot of guys latch on to the Joker because they like how much of a piece of [ __ ] he is Murdoch is kind of like that but for gay teenage girls you can tell that this is true from this drawing I did of him in my 8th grade math notes the designs for all four are great and definitely stand out up there with deers when it comes to best character designs of the early 2000s they fit the artist test where you just kind of look at them and get the vibe yet there's something about them that makes you want to see more which is good because we will be seeing a lot of them with the initial release of the Tomorrow Comes Today EP followed by their self-titled debut album gorillas kicked off what would end up being called phase one for those outside the fandom gorilla separates their Mainline album Cycles into phases which are generally characterized by their own unique character designs promotional material and story kind of like how Pokemon separates its stuff into gems and phase one blew up Beyond expectations the debut album hit number three on the UK album charts and number 14 in the United States the album had its fair share of popular singles and songs the main one being Clint Eastwood otherwise known as Sunshine in a Bag two early 2000s LimeWire users but others like 19 2000 rock the house and Tomorrow Comes Today all gained a fair chunk of recognition these songs were unlike any other being played on the radio at the time in a way where it's hard to pin it down to a certain genre the best I can say is that it sounds like a mix of punk rock and trip hop but even that doesn't really seem to do it justice maybe I describe it as the soundtrack for the coolest comic you've never read lyrics would bounce between explorations of isolation drug use critiques of modern society and honestly just kind of gibberish there are some songs here that make no sense to me but sound really cool beyond the music the videos were also shared around they were vibrant and fun and well animated and unique weak and interesting the sort of thing that could be played on Toonami right next to Daft Punk Clips the band would release little short cartoon skits make CD Realms full of games and had a fully interactive website where you could explore the gorilla's fictional home Kong Studios all this worked together to make gorillas feel like more than just an album or a band but an overall interactive experience a world for one to jump into it placed emphasis on the characters their wacky Dynamics and personalities while still giving them enough of an edge and cool factor to make them overall appealing to an older demographic I'm going to say it now if you're not going to listen to the albums at least go and watch the Gorillaz music videos because I swear there aren't they are so captivating to look at by the end of phase one the self-titled album would sell 7 million copies a number that just doesn't happen anymore way more than the record Executives 25 000 copies estimate and about three times as many copies as the highest selling blur album they also released two companion albums a b-sides album entitled G sides and an often forgotten Remix album by the DJ group Space Monkeys entitled Leica come home additionally phase one visual content was compiled on a DVD release called celebrity takedown there are also plans for gorilla's animated movie around this time but that fell through a story that will be repeated over and over again over the course of the next few decades with phase one done it was on to the next thing Damon Albarn started a new side project as well as a brand new blur album the only one without guitarist Graham Cox and that's pretty much a gorilla's album in all but name before blur broke up officially and Jamie hillett was busy yeah I don't know probably smoking weed and having a good time soon enough Albarn and Hewlett both decided to return to gorillas and thus phase two began with the single rocket the start of a campaign entitled reject false icons and the release of their second studio album Demon Days I don't even know how to write about Demon Days To be honest I could go more in depth with it theoretically but trying to write an essay about Demon Days kind of feels like trying to write an essay about like air or water like it may sound like hyperbole but this album has been such a fundamental part of my life that it's just like there it exists what can I say about it it's gorilla's Demon Days it's a [ __ ] Masterpiece it's my favorite album of all time like Demon Days represent such a shift forward for gorillas really showcasing what the project could be and what it would basically evolve into unlike the first album which don't get me wrong is great in its own right demon days shifts into more pressing political commentary and outwardly darker subject matter in this case serving as a commentary against the recently started Iraq war and trying to capture what daily life is like when living in the war on terror it achieves this via's sound and aesthetic I can only describe as post-apocalyptic this increase in scope also extends to its collaborators while the first album had some guest artists this one goes all out on them the incredible De La Soul MF Doom I turn her unfortunately and Dennis [ __ ] Hopper then there came a sound distant at first That Grew into a gastrophic so immense it could be heard far away in Space the character designs also got noticeable shifts as well abandoning some of the simple cartoon appearance they had in Phase One and replacing it with a grittier edgier aesthetic starting the trend of each phase bringing a new variation on how the characters look and are drawn I really feels as though Demon Days was an attempt to prove that gorillas could be much more than they appear to be that this wasn't just a gimmick side project the band is basically said as much the biggest thing to come out of Demon Days was the first single Feel Good Inc which quickly became gorilla's standout song and biggest hit to the point where if you clicked on this and weren't already gorillas fan your first thought was probably oh right the Feel Good Inc people the song charted incredibly highly for something like gorillas managing to top the US alternative rock charts for eight weeks and even managed to make its way into an iPod commercial back when a niche alt rock artist being chosen to advertise Apple products was a big deal and not just the unfortunate Norm follow-up single dare while not doing as well as Feel Good Inc still did pretty well all things considered they've reached number one in the UK gorilla's only song to have done that Demon Days in Phase 2 as a whole really represented gorillas at their height the peak of their cultural influence they even got to do a big ass expensive hologram performance of Feel Good Inc with Madonna at the Grammy Awards there is one big change though that came with phase two mainly with its final video El Manana you see up to this point gorilla's videos in lore were you know fairly standard in what you'd expect for a fake band like this there would be backstory and story beats sure but it was mainly side stuff things that could be easily ignored by casual listeners but were rewarding for those is keeping track with updates on the website or picking up the biography or listening to every single bit of side content ever made it had more in common within ARG than it had a conventional narrative experience Easter eggs meant to add on to the content rather than be the main content itself the music videos would have strange and out there things happen in them but for the most part it was always treated as these are music videos being filmed by the band gorillas rather than this is stuff happening to the band gorillas and for most of its run Phase 2 followed this trend with videos having some sort of lore or backstory behind them but basically being this is the band gorillas filming a music video El Manana however significantly changes things the video which follows up from feel good inks shows noodle resting and relaxing on the floating windmill from Feel Good Inc when helicopters arrive and bomb the place down in a fiery violent scene a video so intense that it's blocked entirely in the United States I guess the subtext of the video is clear El Manana is a somber song and with it is a somber video about how the horrors of War destroy isolated places of peace and nature but the surface level literal stuff was what really stuck with a lot of fans because the video ends with the island destroyed and Noodle's survival up in the air noodle who had become a prominent figure in the band's promotion and significant to the backstory of phase 2 had seemingly been killed off and for the first time we seem to have a Gorillaz video that had long-standing implications regarding a narrative going forward the events of the El Manana video and the fate of noodle were addressed with conflicting information and things like the rise of the ogre biography the promotion for the incredible Phase 2 besides album decides and general updates to the Kong Studio website in some tellings mainly from the character of Murdoch who is an unreliable source the video was all staged and planned as a way to get a long-standing rival off his back and noodle is fine and it has just left the band but in other tellings such as real life interviews and other in-character content noodle was in fact dead or at least presumed Dead with an emergency transmission from her being played on the website the day of Rise of the ogre's release and Murdoch then using that transmission to figure out that noodle was trapped in hell and he was going to attempt to rescue her but but the attempt failed by the end of phase two the gorillas in Universe Studio space Kong Studios was sold off and the band went their own separate ways noodles fate still a mystery this was a huge status quo change even if you weren't actively following Gorillaz lore it was obvious that something like this would have to be dealt with I mean one of the main characters died whatever follow-up gorillas did it almost certainly have to address this and furthermore it meant the music videos were now open grounds for a continuous narrative one that fans could obsess and dive into but that would have to wait because for now phase two was over which meant it was time for the band to figure out what comes next back in the real world Hulen and Albarn were doing quite well for themselves and ready to take a much needed break and by break I mean Damon Albarn did another side project and then to follow it up Damon Albarn did another side project this time with Jamie Hewlett as they worked with Chen XI Zheng to create a staged Opera based on Journey to the West a project Auburn called gorillas in all but name which was never professionally recorded until my knowledge hasn't been performed in 10 years so the only way to experience it is to listen to the soundtrack album unfortunately working on Journey to the West served as an important step in guerrilla's history because it allowed Hewlett and allbarn to work together in a different medium using different characters than the gorillas band members in order to tell a narrative and from this the initial plans for the next gorillas project were underway this time a huge ambitious thing called Carousel Carousel was going to be a huge departure from gorilla stuff before for starters it wasn't going to focus on the four main characters they might have made a cameo in it but as a whole the project wouldn't be about them instead it was going to reframe the concept of what gorillas could be by making it less about this specific match of characters and more any project made by Al Barton Hewlett and this creative team so if it wasn't a straightforward gorillas band project then what exactly was Carousel was it an album was it a film was it another stage show the answer was somehow all three Carousel was meant to be an audio visual theatrical experience it was supposed to be comprised of 15 or so interlinked films some live action and some animation set to live music placed alongside a 100 mile long Victorian Pier with segments of the pier representing a different stage in life going from birth to Childhood to adulthood and so on so forth until you reach the end of the pier upon which you would see a giant Carousel written by giant creatures the carousel containing a flashback of your entire life all connected by an overarching exploration of mystical life in Britain then you know it turns out it's actually very hard for a band to get their record label to fund a live concert album feature film 100 mile long Victorian peer project as opposed to you know just an album despite the out there looted chrisly ambitious nature of the project it did have a fair bit of work put into it Hewlett had Illustrated a lot of visuals for it already and Auburn had 170 songs for the project because that man is a goddamn Menace and can't stop writing songs three tracks from Carousel were actually released publicly as demos around this time two of which went on to become full tracks on Plastic Beach and one of which electric shock was basically discarded minus some of it being sampled for the song Rhinestone Eyes sadly Carousel was not meant to be as the lack of securing funding meant the project would need to be significantly changed and retooled hopefully this is the last time we hear something like that the project was soon evolve into a new form after Damon albarnd was on vacation and noticed some plastic on the beach and called up Hewlett suggesting that they do a new gorillas album called um but Plastic Beach because when you can't get the money for your band to make a 100 mile Victorian Pier you have your band make an album about a beach with a pier instead the inspiration soon started to flow as what was Carousel mutated into a new project one based around environmental issues and the existence of an isolated island made entirely out of plastic and trash which is a real thing I Revel by the way look it up Albarn went into retooling and recording mode while Jaime also expressed his enthusiasm to enter the world of gorillas once again I'm so [ __ ] bored of drawing those characters in order to adapt and evolved with the project into something more fitting for the headspace coolant and Auburn were at the idea for what gorillas could be had to change once again a big one was significantly aging up the characters once more and giving another art style shift this time to my personal favorite aesthetic everyone just looks really [ __ ] great like this with these new designs of course came new lore and multimedia projects in order to tell that lore but despite or maybe because of hewlett's hesitance to return to these characters he and his crew at zombie flesh eaters went all out to make phase 3 of gorillas remarkable taking cues from what they had worked on in Journey to the West and Carousel phase three was going to be more cinematic with an overarching narrative placed strictly at the Forefront in the music videos as well as supplementary material I'll get into what a lot of the supplementary material was later but for now let's just focus on the introductory Narrative of Plastic Beach which was done via Murdoch hosted Pirate Radio broadcasts character specific animated bumpers called idents and little short sneak peeks at the island in question phase three of gorillas kicks off with the band still separated and on their own paths and noodles still missing and presumed dead Murdoch on the run from a gang of pirates ends up discovering an island made entirely out of garbage stuck together located as far away from any land mass on Earth which he promptly spray painted pink and made the new gorillas HQ inspired by his Revelation Murdoch decides to get the band back together and record a new album during this time there is also a supernatural figure known as the boogeyman who seems to be a once Ally of murdochs now turned against him for whatever reason and trying to hunt him down the boogeyman was actually a reused character design from Carousel which is you know just kind of neat 2D is the one easy band member to retrieve as Murdoch or maybe the boogeyman it's a bit hard to tell gas is 2D at his apartment rendering him unconscious until he wakes up on Plastic Beach in a suitcase locked inside a room next to his greatest fear a giant whale and forced to rate songs for the new album while also being kept away from painkillers and abused by Murdoch because noodle is still presumed dead Murdoch takes a piece of of her DNA recovered from the element on a crash site and uses it to create cyborg noodle a mute replacement he was good at shooting guns and will be the band's guitarist for phase 3. Murdoch is unable to track down Russell who he then replaces with a drum machine symbolizing how Russell is often the one Gorillaz member who rarely gets interesting plot lines or development to the point of barely even being a character please y'all give this man something to do okay Russell does get stuff for phase three probably the most he's gotten not counting phase one we see that Russell has fallen on Hard Times writing a letter expressing how he's tired of the Demons chasing him down which sounds like a metaphor but is actually literal Russell keeps getting possessed by demons and ghosts in order to stop this and get away from it he throws himself into the sea and lets the ocean take him along the way though he ends up swallowing so much water and pollution that he becomes super [ __ ] huge so that's the start of this whole thing Murdoch entering full villain era while being chased down by Pirates and Supernatural forces Russell doing his own giant man thing cyborg noodle being [ __ ] terrifying and 2D being kidnapped and traumatized this is as good of a setup as you can hope for in a virtual band which is great because in the real world the first single from Plastic Beach was about to come out [Music] the first single to come out of phase 3 proper was Stylo which was a heavily modified version of one of the earlier Carousel demos the song was released on January 26 of 2010 with a big fancy video coming out later that year on March 1st after months of teasing with lore drops and small song Snippets this was our first taste of what the Plastic Beach era was going to have in store for the band and what the album was going to sound like and the answer is uh pretty great Stylo is a song I can only really describe as an electric funk soul thing the song is about the way in which electricity and man-made objects have overtaken nature the way in which the world is overpopulated and overrun by things now but it's not directly about that so much as it is the undercurrent the lyrics are about love and depression and other sorts of human feelings but they're surrounded by language related to motherboards broadcast and the word electric being repeated over and over again it presents a world where emotions are expressed and contains solely through the language of Machinery Machinery that is overwhelming the world this battle between human nature and electricity is also exemplified in the sound of the song itself Nazi's Soulful Funk grooves hidden beneath heavy pulsing synths the first thing we hear from all Barn in the song is him repeating over and over again each time with more and more robotic sounding harmonies under him even the way the guest artists are utilized play into this theme most death gets refrained and backing vocals with this sharp heavy processed sound that combined with his flow gave him the feeling of a computer booting up going through the processes in motion compare that to the other guest on here legendary vocalist Bobby Womack who kills it with this high intensity passionate belting about the land being electric and how hard it is sometimes oh it's electric it'll be throwing on the street Womack actually passed out in the studio while doing the song and I can totally understand why he is giving it his [ __ ] all here you can hear the pain and then power in his voice the struggle and force that it takes to get through all the everything going on Stylo rules Stylo kicks ass it's such a great song to open a phase with to kick off an album cycle as it conveys the themes they wanted to talk about in such a powerful succinct nature it sounds great and it gets people hyped up and this was never going to be a hit sorry it just wasn't unlike other gorillas big opening singles Stylo is odd you can argue a song like Feel Good Inc was unconventional and certainly yeah it sounds unconventional but at its heart it's still a three minute long Verse Chorus rapper's chorus Bridge rappers sort of song just one where the parts within sound more unique and different than a lot of other songs following a similar structure Stylo doesn't really have that going for it it's almost five minutes long and even the radio edit has it only trimmed down to four trying to identify which part is the chorus here is hard it's more of a bunch of parts that build up off each other it rules and is great but it wasn't something you'd hear being blasted at a party or on the top 10 charts you have to remember the Billboard top songs of 2010 didn't look like Stylo it looked like this [Music] and I got it got a grocery bag and yeah the song didn't chart not really at least didn't crack the top 100 in the UK came in at 103 in the U.S did well in Japan but not really much of anywhere else Silo just wasn't hooking people the way earlier hits like Feel Good Inc or Clint Eastwood were and it wasn't for lack of trying they clearly put a lot of effort into the music video for the song the video for Stylo is a big budget Affair the first gorillas video to be live action this time with 3D renders of the characters in the video we see Murdoch 2D in a malfunction damage cyborg Noodle and a cool looking car called Stylo as they race down a desert highway they attract the attention of a donut eating cop who begins to chase them down only to eat [ __ ] and get shot down almost immediately however they're not in the clear as we see another car chasing them down being driven by Bruce Willis who has no gorillas Canon character name or anything like that it's just Bruce Willis you can see 2D mouth Bruce Willis in the video Bruce Willis tries to shoot them down with his revolver managing to get a good few shots in and significantly [ __ ] up the car meanwhile the boogeyman appears out of nowhere and overtakes the cop in a cloud of smoke seemingly killing him or whatever the boogeyman does the chase ramps up in intensity until the Stylo drives off a cliff and into the sea upon which it becomes a shark submarine and swims away to safety this video looks expensive like you can tell they were given permission to go full Kate Blanchette with the budget and by a god they took it I mean it's a giant car chase with CGI animation and Bruce Willis this surely cost a lot of money and you know credit where it's due it's a great video memorable exciting tense and even kind of funny and also a good Kickstart to the story that's going to be explored in the music videos as every video following this will theoretically continue from the story beats introduced here the video actually received a fair share of success or at least as much as you could hope for with a song that underperformed like Stylo did it got nominated for a Grammy for Best music video lost to Bad Romance which is understandable but also a shame hate to see two bad [ __ ] being pit against each other it also broke a record at the time for most views for a YouTube premiered music video and 900 000 views in the first 24 hours which feels small now but was pretty significant at the time when YouTube still wasn't the dominant platform for music video reveals I want to focus on the YouTube aspect of that statement because it's actually important for the release of the album as a whole this was a very weird time for music videos the outlets that would play these things doing prior gorillas phases were just gone Toonami had been canceled and hadn't yet been revived MTV the company that used to not only play their videos but give them things like cribs guest spots and now fully transitioned into being the Jersey Shore Network they certainly weren't going to be playing the Stylo video in between all that this left YouTube as really the last big outlet for gorillas to get their videos out there which was great in the sense that gorillas fans could watch the videos as they wanted to and share it with friends but bad because this was 2010. YouTube was not as important to the music scene as it is now didn't have nearly as many apps or ways to watch it off desktop and video performance on there didn't translate into Billboard Chart numbers yet so while getting a viewer record like that is cool that didn't necessarily matter as much to the label who wanted more than anything to see a video success translate into sales seemingly as a response to stylo's underperformance gorillas then record label Emi put out the song super fast jellyfish as another pre-album release before making it an official single a few months later I can get the logic here even if it is insane troll logic Feel Good Inc was their big hit and it had De La Soul on it super fast jellyfish has De La Soul on it just do it again there's a few problems with this though for starters because this was an in case of emergency plan super fast jellyfish didn't have a music video Until months later and even then it's not called a music video just a visual accompaniment and it's probably for the best that it's not counted as a music video because this would probably be gorilla's worst music video from what I can tell it wasn't done by Jamie Hewlett or his company zombie flesh eaters in fact he denies a a video even existed in an interview instead it was commissioned to an outside source and The Vibes of the whole thing is sort of 2010s era YouTube sketch I guess it lacks the charm and careful wit of a gorilla's video and feels too much like some random guy mugging to the camera the other problem with trying to make super fast jellyfish in the next Feel Good Inc is that feel good ink was a somber rock rap song about isolation and depression and super fast jellyfish is a parody of fast food commercials about eating jellyfish I adore the song and De La Soul are incredible on it as always but without the context of the album hell even within the context of the album it comes really close to novelty song territory and a novelty song is not going to save your band on the charts in 2010. we are now only two songs into phase three and already seeing under performance and record label issues which is you know always a good sign but you know singles don't really matter as much to fans once they get their hands on the full album and the arrival of Plastic Beach was just around the corner [Music] Plastic Beach came out on March 3rd 2010 five years after demon days after that long of a wait it was time for the general public to see what Damon Albarn had been working on and all that time and I'm not even going to bury the lead with a Snappy transition or anything Plastic Beach rules amazing album incredible album the only reason it's not my favorite album of all time is that Demon Days exist and I'm nothing if not a loyal [ __ ] Plastic Beach as previously stated is a concept album not in the sense that it's connected to the outside storyline with gorillas though it certainly is but in the sense that it's an environmentalist album tied together by the concept of the Plastic Beach a man-made trash Haven away from everything else a symbol of how the world is dying and how we try to get away from it all and what feels like partially an artifact of carousel's original examination of life and aging and partially just how Albarn writes music Plastic Beach isn't here to tell you what to do so much as just captured the depression that comes with living in a world that's dying it's about how alienating it can feel to live in a world surrounded by disposable machines that are always meant to be on never stopping and never giving you a break it's about the difficulty of trying to find and maintain love and connection in a world where Humanity's future seems so unlikely the last part is really important because a fair bit of the songs on Plastic Beach do feel like straight up love songs Rhinestone Eyes Melancholy Hill broken to binge all songs if removed from the greater context of the album would come off as simple well-written love songs but of course in the full scope of the project they take on a deeper meaning a heavy usage of imagery related to pollution lungs factories Machinery electricity plasma screens it's not telling you how to feel it's not simply saying hey pollution is bad you should feel upset by it it's showing you how you already feel it's saying hey doesn't it feel bad to live in a world like this doesn't it suck that this is the life we're currently in I think that's a big reason why the sound of Plastic Beach feels different than previous gorillas albums Plastic Beach is a lot poppier I guess is the word while the first album was very hip-hop inspired and Demon Days was very Rock inspired Plastic Beach takes a lot more of its cues from pop it still has a gorilla's Edge to it it's just sanded down to something cleaner and more electronic this works both with the album's themes of artificiality but also with the general difference in tone compared to something like Demon Days Demon Days was a fighting album it was about seeing the world going to [ __ ] and being angry and outspoken about it it was driven by distorted guitar as dirty bass lines and violent lyrics Plastic Beach isn't about fighting it's about coping it's about trying to find solace in a world that's already ended so of course it's going to contrast the Doom and Gloom with a cheeky optimistic pop sound this shifts in gorilla's sound also extends to how it used its collaborators gorillas as previously mentioned always worked with other people Demon Days especially saw an increase of other musicians contributing something to the tracks Plastic Beach manages to increases even more with a truly staggering amount of collaborators of different types here we have Snoop Dogg the returning daily Soul most deaf Lou Reed little dragon half The Clash and two different orchestras it's a true All-Star Ensemble and they are all incredible on this album but they do also take up a large percentage of the album unlike previous gorillas releases where you'd have say one or two songs entirely done by someone else or with Albarn simply on the chorus Plastic Beach is very dominated by features with a fair bit of songs not featuring Albert on vocals at all in fact of the 16 tracks on Plastic Beach only seven or eight songs feature all Barn doing primary vocals and of those only four don't have any guest collaborators at all I think it works part of the benefit of having so many artistic voices on Plastic Beach is that it begins to feel less like an album from a band called gorillas and more a larger project one filled with a bunch of people all working together to craft the image of this plastic made Resort overall Plastic Beach is an incredible album and for me a prime example of what a pop concept album should sound like it goes all in on the Sea Island Sound with beautiful natural instrumentation contrasted with heavy synths and pop rap verses and sound effects of like large horns and and ocean waves and boats and all of that if nautical nonsense is something you wish then go check out Plastic Beach like right now it's an incredible listen and a classic of the genre well at least it's seen as such now but how did Plastic Beach do when it was originally released fine it did fine this may surprise you to hear but gorillas has never been critical Darlings really like they've never been hated but if you look at reviews of their work it's usually a lot of bees and seven out of tens and things like that my personal take is that a lot of music critics tend to get lost in the animated cartoon band aspect of things and sort of treat their music with the same artistic credibility as like being handed the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack to review and it's only much later when each album has been out long enough to stand out on their own away from the animated band material that critics start to actually look at it with a legitimate critical lens and find that they hold up as Quality Music that's just my theory at least I don't know so it's no real surprise looking at plastic beaches reviews that most of them rated the album in the fine range of things seven out of tens four out of fives B's and B pluses it's all pretty expected and in line with what gorilla stuff usually gets well except for the weirdly hostile New York Times coverage Plastic Beach the third Gorillaz album arrives five years after the last one less a continuation of the band's sound than a nostalgic reminder of how easily we were once duped this is a dull album revealing how over the space of three records Mr Albarn and Mr Hewlett have moved from wacky conceptualists to self-satisfied dilettants the music is thin and inconsequential car commercial electronic Funk and tension free hip-hop most damning this album exposes the ideological weaknesses that were always present in gorillas and amplifies them Whimsical in moments but self-consciously so Rolodex flaunting for the sake of peacock talking Jesus Christ New York Times hated Plastic Beach so much you'd think a trans person made it so yeah as a whole not really interested in what critics had to say about Plastic Beach I don't really care about critics views of gorillas quite frankly what I do care about however is what fans thought of Plastic Beach and if you ask fans nowadays what they think of Plastic Beach you'll probably hear that it's one of if not actually their best album and a high point for the band and so cool and so great but I don't endorse participating in historical revisionism I was there and I remember that Plastic Beach was divisive in the fandom when it dropped yeah so fair bit of people liked it even at the time but looking back on discussion threads from that era you'll find a surprising number of negative comments people who didn't like the more pop-centric sound people who didn't like the amount of collaborators people who hated the amount of rap on the album people who hated that there weren't more rap songs in the style of Feel Good Inc or Clint Eastwood the backlash wasn't something I'd call Big but it was noticeable a showcase that at the very least there were a fair bit of people who were aren't gelling with the new gorilla sound I should know I was one of them what about sales wise then how did Plastic Beach do despite everything working against it up till this point the answer is surprisingly well it charted at number two on both the UK and U.S sales charts which makes it the highest trading gorillas album yet and even now it's still tied for the lead that's pretty great all things considered especially since this was an album that didn't have any big singles to help sell it it wasn't all in the clear though looking deeper at the data you can kind of see some worrying signs for starters Plastic Beach turned higher than Demon Days but if you look at it it spent half as much time on the Billboard charts before dropping off completely from what I can tell Plastic Beach sold around 1 million copies which isn't awful but is certainly a huge drop from the 7 million copies the first two albums sold what could explain this massive dip is it because the Plastic Beach CD was one of the first CDs I saw sold in this paper case digipack style instead of a plastic case like normal albums probably not but it certainly made it hard to see the spine art when it was on a shelf and that certainly bugged me I think a more honest answer is to once again look at what the musical landscape was like in 2010 this was a strange time in music where at least it feels that way in retrospect streaming wasn't really a thing yet the vinyl Revival wasn't really a thing yet CDs weren't fully out but they didn't feel fully in either years of Feel Good Inc commercial conditioning had worked and now basically everyone had some form of digital music player and with that came an upraising in digital music sales which meant a lot of the late 2000s early 2010s music felt very single Reliant gone was the era of buying a whole album because it had one song you liked on it and in its place was buying the one song you know because it's one dollar and adding it to your library and listening to without thinking too much this worked out great for a lot of Pop acts and the cast of Glee who could maintain an audience and radio play off of individual songs and digital sales but where does that leave a band like gorillas one that theoretically had radio hits and singles and the individual songs people knew but always marketed themselves as a full cohesive project one where you bought the album to get a full experience especially when the singles that could have been used to convince random teenagers surfing the iTunes store to pick up the rest of the album weren't necessarily taking off speaking of it was time for gorillas to put out a new single on Melancholy Hill the 10th track off Plastic Beach was chosen as the next single from the album with a video dropping in early June 2010 thinking about it it's honestly kind of a weird choice for a single considering that it's a slow and well melancholic Love Song and certainly not something that would do well on the radio on the other hand it's a perfect song for a big single considering that it's one of the greatest songs I've heard in my life and one of my favorite music videos of all time on Melancholy Hill is perfect pure musical Perfection absolutely no notes gorgeous beautiful heart-wrenching the first song to ever make a depressed traumatized little 13 year old Emily feel moved to the point of physical tears if not gorilla's best song then damn sure close to the top on Melancholy Hill is a love song it's about finding yourself at the height of Despair where everything seems ruined and ugly where that feeling of sadness is a mountain you have to overcome but yet making the most of it as best as you can by finding love and compassion through it all it may not be perfect it may not fix things it could all just be Daydreams and make-believe but it's what you have to do to keep going through the darkness and the music itself God the music it's the synth heavy song with this light subtle acoustic guitar under it all with Albarn doing these lovely harmonies it all works together to create this picture of nostalgia of Bittersweet gentleness of strange Mercy these emotions are also reflected in its music video which is somehow one of the most violent gorillas videos one of the saddest gorillas videos and one of the funniest gorillas videos all at the same time it starts on a ship with this strange woman in a mask who it turns out is a somehow alive noodle she's worn by an attendant that the ship is under attack from Pirates and he's been sent to bring her to the nice boots she instead takes out a Tommy Gun and begins shooting down the airships until the ship evacuates and she's forced onto one of those nice boots we then pick up where the Stylo video left off with Murdoch and 2D and cyber Noodle and the shark submarine as cyborg noodle wakes back up and vomits an octopus the submarine is joined by several others all containing the other artists on Plastic Beach before they arrive at a manatee on a floating piece of Island being stroked by the boogeyman cyborg noodle shoots at him but the boogeyman takes no damage and instead pushes the sad looking Manatee into the water we see a giant Russell reunite and pick up noodle while the fog clears and reveals that the gorillas have finally made their way to Plastic Beach itself there's so much to love about this video the fact that it showed that yes they were serious about continuing a storyline from Stylo the mix of 2D and 3D animation the way it keeps the environmental commentary of the album by including things like the super fast jellyfish getting sucked up by the submarines propellers or the sad looking Manatee on a plateau made of trashed cars the way it captures the same something is wrong feelings as a song by focusing on the discomfort of 2D the inhuman behavior of cyborg noodle the new more aggressive personality of actual noodle I mean even the fact that they chose to reveal that noodle the guitarist for the band was alive in a video for a song based entirely around a soft acoustic guitar it's perfect it's everything gorillas could ever dream of achieving A Perfect Blend of masterful songwriting and X really crafted visuals working in harmony to enhance each other it did not turn at all this song was not a success it is now the video has over 200 million views it's one of gorilla's most popular songs but it wasn't then and then was What mattered this is as good of a time as any to talk about the supplementary material that accompanied the Plastic Beach album gorillas is not a cheap project to promote let's look at Carly Rae Jepsen for example Carly Rae has had a similar career trajectory as gorillas both had their big smash hit song on their second album both had a third album which rendered them a lot of Acclaim but underperformed commercially and both have spent their time since mostly as a cult act surrounded by a passionate fan base the difference is that to promote a Carly Rae Jepsen album you can get by with filming a few music videos of varying degrees of complexity having her do a tour in smaller more personal venues and have her appear on things like I don't know hot ones or something to do interviews or guest spots or whatever would it be better if Carly Rae Jepsen was more popular and received more Commercial Success oh I mean absolutely without a doubt but I also get the feeling that the ship can run fine as it is now compare this with gorillas where at bare minimum in order to produce and promote it you need to have in-house animators to construct every music video and concert animatic in-house artists to draw each bit of promotional art a writer on standby to write the story and interview answers and audio Vlogs voice actors on stand by to do set interviews and audio logs and big venues that are equipped to handle both the massive amounts of instruments and musicians required to properly run a gorilla show as well as showcase the visuals created to be displayed for set shows and this is the bare minimum this isn't counting anything else they do on top of this and for phase 3 they did a lot on top of this so for starters let's talk about the island itself you know the island that is on the cover that they showed in promo clips and everything yeah they built that it's a giant replica of an island and a huge ass tank of water that took a whole team to build and they got their mileage out of it and they shot so many [ __ ] album covers but they still built a whole [ __ ] Island diorama in a giant ass tank of water to set it in there are broadcasts hosted by Murdoch where he would take over a radio show and drop Gorillaz lore in between songs there's a fair bit of these to track down as well as other Audio Drama things like a 37 minute long Murdoch and 2D in character interview that was released on iTunes or Murdoch's half hour Pirate Radio sessions that would be uploaded to the main website these sorts of audio things were a lot of the time excuses for characters like Murdoch and 2D to exchange banter and bits with each other but they were also instrumental when it comes to piecing together lore or finding out new story beads for an example of how silly this could get gorillas did a promotional ad for the recently released Internet Explorer 9 and not only did it feature an extensive amount of original animation but it's also here that we learned that the boogeyman The Arc villain is after Murdoch's Soul which she apparently sold a while ago and the Internet Explorer commercial ends with the tease of a new potential antagonist called the Evangelist and a contest to decide what the Evangelist would look like gorillas would do things like this prior to phase 3 but phase 3 was when it all started to feel a lot more worthwhile at least to me I mean I just watched an advertisement for Internet Explorer that may or may not help me understand the story of the album or predict the next music video but if we're talking about the big gorillas lore dispenser then we have to finally finally talk about the website gorillaz.com was always a pretty cool play case as I mentioned earlier during phases one and two the gorilla's website was modeled after the band's fictional Kong Studios where visitors could roam around the halls and visit band members rooms and play little interactive flash games it gave fans things to do when visiting the site and helped reinforce the multimedia image of gorillas however the site would need to go through a radical change for phase three Kong studios in lore had been destroyed that place was no more so the answer was to redesign the website entirely into its most ambitious State ever the phase 3 version of the website had basically everything a gorillas fan could want it was a way to keep up with actual news about the band a way to sign up for their fan club to get exclusive offers and Deals it had a thing called G player which could be used to stream gorilla's music videos full albums and play all the flash games from phases one and two plus new ones made for phase three it had individual profile Pages for each band member where they'd post updates in character for the fans to check in and comment on it was all very cool but nothing compared here to the actual big part so much like how Kong Studios was explorable in phases one and two the phase 3 version of the site has an explorable Plastic Beach except instead of Kong Studios which mostly operated like a DVD menu game from the early 2000s Plastic Beach on the gorilla's website was a full in-browser point-and-click adventure game you could reverse Plastic Beach as you wish to find Clues to unlock new parts of the island explore rooms to find hidden story elements interact with band members and other characters even with voice acting and gorilla's song Serving as background music I spent hours upon hours on this website there's a fair chance that gorillas.com was my most played video game of 2010. it wasn't even that it was a significantly long experience it was just that it was so much fun to get lost in and explore and talk to people and live in the world of Plastic Beach there's another plastic beach-based game released from the website called escape to Plastic Beach this was divided into three different chapters chapter one being mostly based on the Stylo video and having you either drive the car as Murdoch or shoot things a cyborg noodle chapter 2 continues from that with you playing as Murdoch in the ocean as you try to collect 2D and Cyborg Noodle and get them to safety while dodging obstacles both of these were free to play Things hostility on the website however chapter 3 was released later on its own as a paid game you could play on computer and iOS in that you play as Murdoch as you Glide around Plastic Beach and go through Rings Superman 64 style and shoot enemies down in order to stop 2D from escaping the island it wasn't very good to be honest and the mobile version was panned by actual video game critics and fans but it was still pretty neat maybe it was just me being 13 at the time and still susceptible to the appeal of license tie and stuff I don't know but it felt cool to be able to play an iPhone game based on a band I liked there was another gorilla's IOS app released but this time it wasn't a game rather a Plastic Beach passport themed updates app a cute little way to keep track of Gorillaz news and tour info and tweets and whatnot there's a through line in all of this everything done here from the Simplicity of an updates app up to the Ambitions of a full in-browser adventure game were made as an enhancement of the Plastic Beach experience a way to keep the illusion of a grand story a world that you were entering into that was worth digging into being a fan during phase 3 felt like walking into Disneyland where there was so much effort placing to giving you an immersive Out of This World experience to convince you that these characters and these places are real and worth caring about but that's not the important through line in all of this the important through line is that everything I just mentioned is gone phase three of the gorilla's website shut down in 2014 and with it everything on it went away too things like artwork and interviews and audio logs and exclusive videos and promos all officially wiped if not because the website was down then because the band privated all of them on YouTube the only reason that stuff survived was because of fans backing it all up and re-uploading it themselves the games though weren't so lucky all the flash games are gone to my knowledge the Plastic Beach Adventure game was meant to have a final update to conclude the story of the phase but that never happened instead the site went offline and once it did that was it it was programmed in such a way that nobody was able to make a local backup for it and the game has remained unplayable for basically a decade the iOS game is also unplayable and unpurchasable now having not been updated for more modern iOS Hardware meaning that it's also completely gone now I actually have it on my old iPhone but I don't have a charger cord for it because it used the way too big old Apple plugins so I guess I just have to hope the data is still there for years to come but until then it and the web game are considered lost media and unlike phases one and two which had DVD releases that could gather all this stuff together that could feature a full recording and Recreation of the website phase three didn't get that whether due to lack of funding or lack of Interest who's to say it was up to fans to preserve and compile and pass down whatever they could and whatever they couldn't is history now I guess what did we learn from this what is there to take away gorillas put a lot of money into a lot of side material you don't just simply make a full web game you don't just make an iPhone app you don't just create hours upon hours of in-character audio files that stuff takes time and more importantly money money to make and money to maintain and this is where I have to face an uncomfortable truth about the gorillas project from an executive perspective all that stuff I just described incredibly unnecessary money sinks you see for fans that stuff is gorillas Hewlett and his team's contributions are as important to the band as albarn's music is of course but a website on its own doesn't bring in money audio interviews don't bring in money a 1.50 iOS game doesn't really bring in money music brings in money and music is what a record label is going to care about to an executive everything else is essentially a billboard so if the music itself isn't bringing in enough money then well of course the stuff that's going to suffer for it first is the stuff the label deems unimportant there was a lot of confusion in October of 2010 When Gorillas uploaded something called Rhinestone Eyes storyboard film now Rhinestone Eyes which was the fourth track on Plastic Beach had already quickly become a fan favorite and made a lot of sense for the next single and next video except it didn't get released as a single and this wasn't the next video Instead This was exactly what it says when it's in the storyboard for a music video which begs the question why is it just the storyboard for a music video remember when I said earlier that they clearly spent a lot of money on Stylo and the label clearly expected it to become a big hit that was not me simply inferring that was the truth of what happened Silo went incredibly incredibly over budget as you'd expect from something that was a big car chase with Bruce Willis and because it didn't go number one in the executives at Emi were frustrated with spending so much and getting no hits in return they pulled the funding from The Rhinestone Eyes video a week into its production there had been scrapped gorillas videos before the song 5'4 from their first album had its storyboards also released because the band decided to do a full video from another song instead but the thing is that Rhinestone Eyes wasn't just a fan favorite song but when you watch the storyboard it becomes incredibly clear that this would have been an Incredible video and one that was important to actually continuing the plot line the band had been doing so far in Rhinestone Eyes we continue where we left off in on Melancholy hill we see noodle writing Russell's head as they travel across the sea we see Murdoch and Cyborg noodle confront the boogeyman on top of Plastic Beach we see a flashback that shows that the boogeyman is actually a rejected fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse who made a deal with Murdoch years ago we see a shootout between cyborg Noodle and the army that The Boogeyman creates out of thin air we see the whale who had been tormenting 2D the whole Adventure game begin to try and attack him in his room before Russell picks up the whale and throws him and out of his mouth pops noodle staring face to face with cyborg noodle revealing her unmasked face for the first time and displaying a huge scar across her AI even in just this animatic form the video is jaw dropping and what it reveals and the way it progresses the story it felt like a proper Climax and the idea that it was seemingly not going to be actually animated because the record label didn't want to is upsetting there are plans to follow up Rhinestone Eyes with another single Nvidia to binge which would have concluded the story by having cyborg Noodle and noodle fight on the beach and then a final update revealing that Murdoch was an immortal uhu had appeared in various important moments in world history and showing that Plastic Beach was attached to a plug at the bottom of the ocean that would then be lifted causing all water to suck into the Earth and for the world to end that didn't happen to binge wasn't even released as a single so if Rhinestone Eyes wasn't the next single and two binge wasn't the next single then what song from the album was the next single well that's the thing it wasn't a song from the album doncamatic was a track recorded in the fall of 2010 and released in November later that year it's a collaboration with up-and-coming R B singer daily whose takes lead vocals with all Barnes only vocal contribution being him repeating a few words in the chorus the main thing to note about the song is that it sounds overwhelmingly pop like even more than Plastic Beach did it's named after the duncomatic Rhythm machine which gets used in the song which does provide a unique tone but otherwise it is very pop in a way that doesn't really gel with the rest of the phase it doesn't really sound nautical or even the right brand of electric as the rest of the album the lyrics Don't Really match the vibe of things either you go through it and it's just like you know a song about the unplug from the game don't just sit around if you want to be famous don't let your dreams be dreams it's the most that I felt like a gorilla song is about nothing the video isn't anything to write home about either you get to find enough video on its own but it's just daily in an admittedly impressive submarine set as he sails along towards Plastic Beach no story progression no real use of the band members not much in the way of original animation just daily in a submarine singing yeah this is the weakest group music video it's not even a Fair competition people at the time hated doncamatic and it's easy to understand why the whole thing reeks of a Velma Kelly Final Act of desperation I don't know how much direct Studio interference there was on the production but the whole thing feels so forced record a new song with a hot new artist with a fresh pop sound and vague Enough lyrics that could be played on the radio or in a club somewhere give it something called a joker remix shoot a relatively cheap music video that focuses on the hot new artist doing his thing and not anything weird like an octopus vomiting cyborg whether or not you like donkey Matic song or video feels ultimately secondary to the real issue with it which is that it's hard to not resent it for feeling like an executive mandated replacement for the songs and story content people actually wanted to see and it didn't even work the song didn't really chart anywhere either performed even worse than Stylo and The Rhinestone Eyes video completely eclipsed it in views and somehow charted higher despite it not being an actual single Duncan Matic isn't nearly as hated now as it used to be mainly because it's been so long since phase three that a lot of people are either used to it or weren't even there to experience it in real time unless you don't have the context affecting it how do I personally feel about donkey Matic yeah I don't hate it as a song it's fine enough I can listen to it and enjoy it but I guess let's just say that I have a playlist of every Damon Albarn song that I've kept updated for years and I didn't realize until making this video that I forgot to put doncamatic on it and even now as I say this out loud I'm realizing I still haven't put doncamatic on it so you know Duncan Matic was the final video and single release for Plastic Beach the phase which had been building up so much story and extended Universe material just stopped and ended on a dude in a submarine but life goes on and while Jaime was finishing up duncomatic Albarn was busy doing his own part of gorillas playing live for as big of an artistic effort as Plastic Beach was it would make sense for it to have live shows to coincide with it as well gorillas had done live shows before a small tour for the first album an exclusive smaller five-day residencies for Demon Days but Plastic Beach was going to be bigger and better than everything that came before it was going to be gorilla's First World Tour and not only that but it was going to receive a radical change in how the band approached his live performances one thing non-fans always ask when gorilla's live shows are brought up is how exactly something like that works given the whole virtual band Element it's a valid question as it's something the band has played with and altered over the years during phase one gorilla's live shows were performed completely behind a giant screen the animation artwork taking up full Center Stage this was apparently pretty difficult to get used to for the band so for the few live shows in phase two lights and screens were placed behind each band member in order to keep them in Shadows while guest stars were allowed to be fully up front and bathed in light with animated material projected behind them this would change once again and for phase three where now there was no real attempt to hide the band they're all on stage performing as you would expect with any other concert with any music or animated content being projected on the screen above them there actually is lore to explain this they made a promo video showing that Murdoch cyborg Noodle and 2D were being kept from going up on stage themselves by the gorillas live band who work for the Boogeyman and short CGI Clips played during each concert showing the three locked in their dressing room and trying to get out so they could perform it's a fun way to explain away the existence of Damon Albarn and his friends on stage while also making the shows easier and comfortable for all the performers which is important because holy [ __ ] this tour had a lot of performers Plastic Beach as previously established has a lot of collaborators on the album and a lot of those collaborators came on tour with gorillas including the orchestra in half The Clash and at select performances MF Doom and if you saw them in North America you also got nerd as an opening act a full star-studded affair with a total of 70 musicians going across the globe the tar last did from October 3rd to December 21st of 2010 with 37 shows total and by all accounts it was an amazing once in a lifetime experience I mean I wouldn't know because I asked to go but didn't get to because it was a Wednesday and it was a school night and I was told that 50 tickets were a bit pricey and then gorillas didn't tour in my city for another 12 goddamn years and so because I didn't get to go then in October 2010 I had to wait until [ __ ] 2022 to see my favorite [ __ ] band to life and I am not bitter about it whatsoever but the show itself seemed good based on what I've heard from people who did go plus footage that's been posted online full of energy full of a lot of hits a bunch of talented musicians all sounding great only problem is that the tour was [ __ ] expensive like of course it was you're traveling around with 70 musicians a lot of them very accomplished and popular musicians across the world and playing to big ass Arenas according to Damon Albarn the tour barely managed to break even and economically it was quote an absolute [ __ ] disaster and considering how important touring is to artist Revenue especially with album sales being on such a decline yeah with the Rhinestone Eyes and Donkey Matic stuff happening at the same time as the tour both sides of gorillas were currently experiencing huge issues with funds but hey it's not all doom and gloom because during the tour Dame and Auburn had time to record a new gorillas album gorillas have released more than one album in a phase before as previously mentioned phases one and two had their G sides and d-sized releases of bonus tracks and remixes so a new phase 3 album coming out so close to plastic beaches release wasn't necessarily a surprise but the nature of the project certainly was the fall is an album that was written and recorded by Damon Albarn during the North American stretch of the escape to Plastic Beach tour how did he manage to find time to write and record an album while on the road well you see the fall was made almost entirely using Damon albarn's iPad the whole thing is basically a musical Journal that he constructed while on the tour bus going from place to place with the songs reflecting the individual pit stops and things Damon is reflecting on along the way with the in-universe explanation being that it's an album 2D himself made to reflect his own mental state this might not sound that impressive at first but you have to remember that this was 2010 and the iPad was brand new still in its first model Mirage man didn't even have an iPad app yet to my understanding Damon Albarn was the first major label musician meant to make an album using an iPad and if you like the liner notes on the physical release you'll see that the stuff that he was using were apps like text to speech and bass line and something just called synth basic generic apps that anyone could download and mess with on their iPad and he made a whole album out of it and that album is the most divisive album in the band's entire discography by far the fall released on Christmas Eve 2010 is a free stream on the website with download options available for fan club members and a proper wide physical release done months later in April 2011. there's something so funny about a final copy of the Fall it's like having a 4K copy of Inland Empire the moment fans listen to it they became conflicted you see as I said the fall is an album that serves as albarn's journey through America using his iPad to capture what he's thinking and it sounds exactly like that this is not an album of bangers and jams this is Damon Albarn messing with random sound effects making an experimental subdued introspective piece the first of many album projects that are going to sound like this going forward in the 2010s and people didn't really want that the summit felt or even steel feels like Meandering nonsense boring dull insipid like there's a song here that's literally just Damon singing about plastic bags he's seeing flowing in the breeze down the highway [Music] it's that sort of album and I guess that's why I like it I don't know I get white people don't it's certainly not a gorillas album I put on for fun or even all that often but it does what it needs to do which is provide an experimental listening experience honestly in some ways it feels really ahead of its time considering that by the end of the 2010s a lot of music is going to be made on basic commercial computers and tablets by musicians uploading introspective music over electronic beats to their SoundCloud it's not something I'd say you need to listen to but if you're on the fence about it I'd say put it on while driving around one rainy day and listen to it in full if anything the album serves as a great example of the importance of track sequencing after listening to 12 songs of sad digital iPad music hearing the acoustic guitar and Bobby Womack's vocals on the song Bobby and Phoenix is like a form of musical catharsis the audio equivalent of clowns opening up in sunlight shining in and if you don't feel like listening to the whole album or got bored attempting to do so then uh listen to revolving doors Amarillo and Seattle total there are the three big highlights of the album I feel like the thing with the fall is that its reception would be better if it was simply released as a Damon Albarn side project or as part of a larger b-sides album and not Market it as the fourth main Studio gorillas album because it's really not that and anyone trying to approach it from that angle is going to have a bad time and basically everyone approached it from that angle which meant a lot of fans were left feeling disappointed and emotion gorillas fans were increasingly having to get used to things were not going well for gorillas not in any sense of the word Plastic Beach was underperforming the tour was barely breaking even the videos weren't getting funded but whatever that stuff could always get worked through easily a band can survive so long as it has a fan base to back it up and it is resourceful enough to find ways to press forward when a band can't survive though is a feud between members and a few very quickly growing in the background at some point in 2010 Hewlett began getting frustrated it's very easy to understand why all of his stuff was getting defunded he was overworked trying to get all this [ __ ] done and the label kept being [ __ ] but Hewlett wasn't simply mad at the label Hewlett was mad at Damon Albarn and you know from his perspective I get it like I said earlier gorillas is a band first and foremost the music aspect is always going to take priority despite the fact that the music aspect was struggling for Success Albarn was getting what he wanted he got to make his dream album Plastic Beach the way he wanted to make it he even got to make another album entirely on an iPad which probably cost nothing to put together and release yeah the tour cost way too much money but the tour happened meanwhile basically everything Hewlett sent out to do was canceled or disregarded or meddled with in some way as Jaime himself put it Damon had half The Clash on stage and Bobby Womack and Mos Def and De La Soul and [ __ ] hypnotic brass Ensemble and Bashi and everyone else it was the greatest band ever and the screen on stage behind them seemed to get smaller every day I'd say have we got a new screen and the tour manager was like no it's the same screen because it seemed to me like it was getting smaller finally Hewlett had had enough he shut down his creative agency zombie flesh eaters which had done a lot of work on gorillas and had been in charge of keeping up the website and went to live in Paris news report and interviews from this era are as depressing as they are contradictory with some stating that Albert and Hewitt have had a complete falling out and that gorillas are unlikely to ever continue again and some saying well you know we all just need a break maybe we'll patch things up and reunite someday which at the time felt like a non-committal way of saying not going to happen like an ex assuring you that you'll still be friends afterwards and it was legitimately depressing the Plastic Beach era ended in such a non-way no b-sides album no final proper video no conclusion to the website nothing like that suddenly everything just stopped and the band was no more there was one final gorilla's release before the two split things off in 2012 gorillas teamed up with Converse to create a line of gorilla's branded shoes and promote the shoes Converse commissions gorillas to team up with Andre 3000 of outcast and James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem the end result was do your thing and it's [ __ ] glorious what is do you think about exactly I don't know Auburn said he was just freestyling because it's hard to write lyrics based on a shoe you could maybe piece together that it's about a dysfunctional relationship and that stuff is definitely there but more than anything it's an exercise in Creative freestyling and the imagery and power that can come from it in a lot of ways it feels like it shares a lot of the chaotic all over the place energy of the first gorilla's album it's a good listen and a pretty good song at least on the regular version because do your thing has two different versions a four minute long clean version that Converse released for download and a 13 minute explicit version that gorillas had streaming on their website in the 13 minute version is almost Indescribable what could they possibly fill with that extended 13 minutes well Andre 3000 does his ending rap verse as he does in the clean version but then the track just keeps going as Albarn and Murphy jam and freestyle their way through several movements and tempos and tones all connected by Andre 3000 freestyling and yelling and repeating in different emotional ranges about how he's the [ __ ] I'm the [ __ ] over and over again for 13 minutes it is God damn incredible the ways in which the track spirals into chaos is so unpredictable but so bizarre and alluring that it raises the song from Simply Good to a Triumph there was a moment in time when it looked like this was going to be the last Gorilla song ever and while I'm glad it wasn't I can't think of a better way for gorillas to have gone out than collaborating with two legendary musicians and letting them do their thing for 13 whole minutes the song had a video done by Hewlett as well and amazingly the video is an attempt to at least provide some closure to the Plastic Beach storyline it's not anything super amazing it's 2D waking up in a messy London house and starting his day it's here where we can see that noodle has been returned safely sleeping peacefully in her bed her face healed Murdoch living there and being his same crabby self the boogeyman also seemingly living there and just kind of chilling and Russell still huge sleeping on the roof the last shot of the video is the Windmill Island from Feel Good Inc chained to the apartment a full circle ending for this story of gorillas this video was deemed non-canon once gorillas came back for phase 4 and thus has been struck from history the song was taken down from Converse's website gorillas took the video down and since it was never on any sort of Digital streaming or storefront the only way to listen to do a thing or watch the video now like most phase 3 content is through fan reuploads on YouTube and other websites years went by and time moved on Jamie Hewlett got married started focusing more on his art did a successful Kickstarter for a new tank girl book and did an art exhibition and Damon Albarn started a side project Damon Albarn started a side project Damon Auburn started a side project then Damon Albarn reunited with blur and made one more new album with them which at that point can be considered another side project and then finally the two managed to patch things up and reunite and begin talking about gorillas again and to everyone's surprise phase 4 was announced in 2016 with the 2017 release of their fifth studio album humans I'll make my in-defense of humans video the moment that I want to deal with a comment sectional hating me but for now the main importance of phase 4 is that gorillas came back for starters they quickly went out of their way to once again provide an ending to Plastic Beach this time via a series of writings uploaded to gorilla's social media accounts entitled The Book of gorillas with each member getting their own book all the stories follow up from where the Rhinestone Eyes video left off exploring where the band members ended up after the attack on Plastic Beach it's not really worth going into all of them in depth they all basically amount to the band survived the attack and split up the main thing worth noting is that while it does theoretically provide closure for what happened after Plastic Beach it doesn't really give closure to Plastic Beach like things like the boogeyman the Evangelist the horsemen and the apocalypse thing Murdoch selling his soul things like that and in general there seemed to be an attempt to ignore a lot of this stuff even the fate of cyborg noodle a major player and technically former member of the band was left in question with contradicting statements given in interviews and press release stuff apparently there were plans to give her a spin-off band called The Rejects but that plan fell through as a whole gorilla's post-revival has been way less story focused than the Plastic Beach era we're on phase 7 now and each phase has a story technically but it works more in the phase one or two way where it's in the background or easily ignorable with videos mainly being and now the band gorillas are in a music video and the biggest story thing to have happened since Plastic Beach was in Phase five when Murdoch got sent to jail on false charges and was replaced with Ace from Powerpuff Girls I'm not even kidding it is actually Ace from Powerpuff Girls but while the band may seem to want to move past Plastic Beach the fans haven't because over the years the reputation of the album has only grown and because of that the fascination with the era and its contents are as strong as ever one big fan effort is to try and get the other Plastic Beach era songs out there in some way shape or form you see back when Plastic Beach was being promoted Damon Albarn would do interviews saying that he made enough songs for two or three albums and toying with the idea of doing a Plastic Beach Trilogy and some of these unreleased songs have obtained Mythic status as we know from interviews that there are things like an unreleased track with the band the horrors some unreleased daily soul songs songs that got used in promo videos that never got a proper release some fans have even started a fan campaign called free the sea to encourage Damon and Hewlett to release these songs and though they've acknowledged the demand it seems like something that if it does happen it won't be for a long while Damon Albarn has explored the idea of maybe doing a Plastic Beach 2 at one point and revisiting the themes from that album since you know the Earth is still dying and all that as Auburn said in 2020 I think sadly more than ever the need to keep reminding people that we need to change our habits to somehow help our climate is really necessary so maybe I need to revisit it really I don't think we can ever leave Plastic Beach I'd like to just have an album called clean Beach but at the moment it's still Plastic Beach so Plastic Beach 2 is a nice idea for me creatively but it's also really depressing but it's necessary in the meantime fans have taken to creating their own custom compilations of what leaked material is out there in calling it seasides there are a few different projects out there called seasides all with different tracklists and songs included but any of them are worth checking out really considering that Plastic Beach didn't get its own b-sides album this is as close as you could hope for perhaps the most incredible fan creation though was in 2017 when the animator named Richard van s uploaded a project he had been working on for six years The Rhinestone Eyes video fully animated as close to the style of phase 3 as possible it's not perfect but it's damn good and seeing a version of Rhinestone Eyes finally finished finally animated was so exciting even got approval from gorillas themselves truly impressive work Richard if you're watching this uh thank you I hope you're doing well but The Saga of Plastic Beach doesn't end there because out of nowhere in the final moments of the gorilla's previous album song machine right after their music video that was made in GTA 5 and got copyright striked and had to be remade from scratch the band got sucked through a portal and ended up shockingly on Plastic Beach once more and the final video for their song machine project the Lost cord takes place entirely on Plastic Beach there are a lot of nods to phase three here Murdoch wakes up in horror with the boogeyman's mask on him Russell is temporarily a giant again noodle crawls out of his mouth like she does in Rhinestone Eyes 2D throws up a whale just like how cyborg noodle threw up an octopus but this time with the whale that traumatized him noodle looks and remorse at her old mask and hey we finally see cyborg noodle again he was in a ship apparently deactivated but later she sinks down below and we see that she's fully operational there's also a shot of Daly's corpse and of all the plastic Beach collaborators Daly is the only one shown here at all and he's shown dead I I wonder if Jamie Hewlett still has hard feelings about donkey Matic then a sea monster played by guest artist Lee John appears and shoots down the island with laser vision destroying Plastic Beach entirely the video doesn't wrap up plastic Beach's story per se but it does give it a better conclusion than it ever had before as good as you could probably hope for all things considered at the very least considering how phase 3 started with Murdoch going full villain and kidnapping 2D to send him to Plastic Beach having the Lost Chord video seemingly show Murdoch realized He's the bad guy and 2D deciding to save him from the island brings that whole Arc that started back in 2010 to a satisfying Enough full circle it's hard to find a force in the world as powerful as artistic ambition with the right amount of talent and with enough drive you can create amazing things unparalleled works of Arts the likes of which people have never really seen before this is especially true nowadays in a world where the internet can allow you basically any Outlet possible for your work where you can create something that is not just a video or a song or a movie but an entire United experience across several forms of media it's Ambitions like this which create some of the most interesting and compelling projects of the modern era but there's a catch which is that things cost money and money needs to come from a source and generally that source is going to want to see that money returned back to them if that money isn't returned back to them then bad things happen and those Ambitions can't really be met classic Beach was an ambitious project that was formed from the skeleton of an even more ambitious project and there was a Wonder to that and a joy in it but that Wonder enjoy came at a cost a cost that gorillas are still feeling to this day gorilla's original record label Emi went bankrupt in 29 it wasn't gorilla's fault Emi had their own fair share of issues that led to it ever since 2019 gorillas has been fully independent funding their production and videos entirely by themselves which is great from an artistic standpoint but it also means that once again that struggle for money is there if you ever wondered why gorillas doth so many sponsorships nowadays why they have 20 different variants of their new album and more than likely why they originally announced they were doing nfts before they pulled out basically immediately and said they weren't doing nfts so don't comment that gorillas did nfts because they [ __ ] didn't anyway it's because gorillas needs to keep the lights on and has been in needing to keep lights on mode since Plastic Beach which means doing what they can to scrape by because of this the odds of us seeing another Plastic Beach style era are slim and if not from lack of funds because well the world that Plastic Beach was made in doesn't exist anymore Plastic Beach was an album made in the last bit of a Dying era before the streaming age before the demise of Flash before everything needed to work on phones lest it never be supported again for the internet was just five apps we all posted to if you go to the gorilla site today what you're going to see is basically a collection of links a YouTube Auto player and nothing more because that's all websites really are nowadays we were lucky enough to get a game based on their song Aries back in 2020 but otherwise that's it don't get me wrong in some ways I think now is the best time for gorillas as a whole they've been around for 20 years which is enough to gather both artistic credibility and a multi-generational fan base in the perks of the streaming era means that it's easier for cult acts like them to get support without relying so much on radio play and hit singles their videos still get tens of millions of views on YouTube I sell them Live Twice last year and both times the crowd was big and passionate they're going to be okay so long as Albert and Hewlett are okay but still as we get ready for the release of their new album cracker Island I can't help but reflect back to Plastic Beach how it contains some of the band's best work how it's so beloved and how it represents so much of what I think makes this project special while also being such a disaster for everyone involved there's an alternate reality where Plastic Beach went as planned where the videos all got to come out and the singles all did really well and Jamie and Damon got to do everything they wanted exactly how they wanted to do it and I'd have loved to get to see that but for now what we have is the aftermath of when artistic ambition faces the harsh reality of commercial capitalism it's the story of Plastic Beach gorilla's biggest success and ultimately their biggest failure a lot of people seem to like it when I talk about things I actually like online and I like talking about it too for example a lot of you really liked my berserk video and wanted to hear me talk more about berserk and specifically my thoughts on the new chapters that have been coming out in the aftermath of the Creator's death if that interests you at all I've been going over each chapter as they come out and talking about them on my nebula Channel I really like making videos like this but you know who doesn't like it when I make videos like this uh YouTube I would be very very surprised if this video gets monetized which means this thing I've been working on for months I'm probably just not going to get any money at all from YouTube for it and it's because of that that I'm really grateful for nebula a streaming service built by creators for creators thanks to nebula I have the ability to upload and distribute videos on whatever topic I want without having to worry about things like copyright Bots or ad restrictions or anything like that while still getting properly compensated for my work and time you also get access to exclusive of videos and add free content from other creators you love like princess weeks Sarah's Ed on the shadows and H bomber guy there's also nebula Originals content made by creators you love exclusively for nebula if you watched all of this you probably love media history and if so you should check out unrated a series about the history of sex and gender and film from the early days of Hollywood to now done by friend of the channel Maggie mayfish it's really interesting and insightful in the type of content that you would never be able to see or do on YouTube and now if you sign up with my link you get free access to nebula classes where creators host classes on how to be a Creator did watching all of this get you really interested in music then check out everything I know about chords by Amy Nolte which will go in depth about what makes a chord and the intricacies of music and the best part about nebula is that you can do all of this get all this content and support me and all your favorite creators for an extremely low price if you use my link below you can get a year of nebula for just thirty dollars or roughly two dollars and fifty cents per month and every person who signs up with my link is directly supporting me which I very much appreciate I do think nebula is a genuinely great deal and it does help me out a lot so if you want to support me and watch a bunch of cool stuff in the process sign up with my link below for a discount on an annual subscription to nebula yarg it's be me pirate lady Emily from the pirate universe and I am here in the Plastic Beach where I am assembling my crew to hit the manry Seas while my crew of patrons is made up of many who I appreciate and whose names are currently scrolling down the screen I'd like to give a special thanks to me first mates and second in command and Drew the champion of flavor Town Pitman Brian Kenny Darren OST Elias Hikari Kyle slaby Mr Joshua now Kyoshi pie Man III Sophie McLaughlin and Stephen Galvin thank you mateys for your support as we go across this perilous voyage nah but in all that seriousness uh thank you to all patrons uh sorry it's been a while since the last vid I got in a car wreck back in like December and that's kind of thrown everything off so uh thanks for sticking by me as I try to recalibrate and work on this silly silly project and if you want to see your own name in the credits and join me merely crew um the patreon link is down below amongst all of the other links uh thank you so much and uh have a great day go listen to uh cracker Island by gorillas it's out now

Channel: Lady Emily

Views: 485,698

Keywords: gorillaz, plastic beach, video essay

Id: ozBnh3eAQUg

Length: 83min 30sec (5010 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2023