Damon Albarn created an entire Gorillaz album on an iPad
During the 1990s, Damon Albarn was at the height of his career while fronting Blur, one of the UK’s biggest bands. The group helped define the Britpop scene alongside Oasis, with whom they engaged in an infamous chart battle in 1995. As part of the Cool Britannia movement of the mid-90s, Blur defined a generation with their largely upbeat and youthful sound.
However, working on music with Blur alone was not satisfying enough – Albarn decided to form another band in 1998 with artist Jamie Hewlett. Gorillaz, although far from being the first ‘virtual band’ (Alvin and the Chipmunks have been doing their thing since 1958…), was like nothing a mainstream group had done before. Albarn and Hewlett created a whole world for fans to indulge in, each fictional member possessing a unique style and personality. Hewlett provided interactive tours of the characters’ ‘studio’, fake interviews, behind-the-scenes clips and music videos to accompany Albarn’s musical creations.
By creating Gorillaz, Albarn could sidestep the boundaries enforced on him by being a member of a popular rock band. Soon, the musician was experimenting with genres that seemed a world away from Blur’s sound. Electronica, pop, dub, rap, hip hop and soul bled into Gorillaz’s sound, and Albarn often recruited artists such as De La Soul, MF Doom and Snoop Dogg to add vocals to his instrumentals. Gorillaz’s self-titled debut went triple-platinum in the UK, aided by the successful single ‘Clint Eastwood’, which contained verses rapped by Del the Funky Homosapien.
During the 2000s, Albarn balanced Gorillaz and Blur, as well as forming a supergroup, The Good, the Bad and the Queen, with Paul Simonon, Simon Tong, and Tony Allen. Gorillaz released the highly successful album, Demon Days in 2005, following it up with Plastic Beach in 2010. Whilst touring the latter album, Albarn’s creative drive could not be contained, resulting in a fourth album, The Fall. The album was created over 32 days during Gorillaz’s North American leg of the tour, which took place in October 2010.
Instead of waiting until the tour was over, Albarn created the entire project on his brand-new iPad. Although he once described himself as a “technophobe and Luddite”, Albarn declared that he “fell in love with my iPad as soon as I got it, so I’ve made a completely different kind of record.” To create The Fall, the musician used 22 different apps on his Apple device, including Dub Siren Pro. “I had a month on tour in America, and everyday, I had at least three hours of emptiness to fill. So I filled them,” he shared.
Albarn avoids creating a gimmick-filled album; instead, it is clear that the accessibility of an iPad was the best creative outlet for the musician whilst on tour, repeatedly playing the same songs every night. “I guess it’s my love letter to America,” he declared. “I used to be baffled by this place, and I guess I still am in some ways…But right now, with all that’s going on, this is a good place to be and this has been a great tour.”
To ensure that fans knew that his iPad claims were authentic, Albarn released the album fairly quickly after recording. He said: “I literally made it on the road. I didn’t write it before, I didn’t prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say, ‘Oh well, it’s been tampered with’, but if I put it out now, they’d know that I haven’t done anything because I’ve been on tour ever since.”
Although The Fall is not Gorillaz’s strongest effort compared to their other albums, it still offers a fascinating insight into Albarn’s musical mind. His ability to create the world’s first album composed entirely on an iPad has undoubtedly inspired plenty of musicians over the past decade.
