What Is It About the Gorillaz Art Style That Is So Unique

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Lauren Berry

I've always found it pretty interesting when people say that it'southward a radical move for a musician or band to mistiness musical genres. It raises the assumption that genres are fixed, and toying with them, manipulating them, or infusing them with instruments or effects reminiscent of another 'established' genre is a bold move. Critics accept often slammed music which plays with genre, or otherwise praised it every bit 'innovative'—without considering the possibility that creativity, perhaps, should be label-less, and allowed to be in the world defined only past its own unique essence.

Music is an art form, and categorising a slice of art as ane matter or another goes against its very transient, undefinable nature. For there is no real objective opinion about the meaning or class of a slice of music—information technology'southward different for every listening individual, and the only objective thing we can say for sure about its significant is that information technology probably reveals something about the artist's ain introspection and personal, spiritual soundtrack.

As with other fine art forms, music resonates with the body—it plucks at your centre strings, or, if information technology's not especially poetic, it at least stimulates exhilaration throughout your blood, or jams with the inner snare pulsate of your soul. Music makes us feel something indescribable—and mayhap it shouldn't have to exist described in words, but left as a beautiful arts and crafts and stimulus for our wordless inner delectation.

Ane of my favourite examples of music genre transmutation is Gorillaz, a projection of Mistiness frontman Damon Albarn and illustrator Jamie Hewlett (est. 1998). Over the years, the widely-successful ring has been treated to a colourful assortment of hyphenated, comma-filled labels by critics and writers desperate to attribute them with a musical identity, and parcel them upwards—for consumers, sure, simply besides for their own writerly, online poesy. Labels include "rap-rock", "smooth funk electronica" and "trip-hop". A reviewer for the Guardian once even wrote that Gorillaz' second album Demon Days dabbles in "disconnected ideas," fusing "dub bass, Dylan-ish singing …a vaguely African guitar twang… a Vocal 2-like riff" together to create something that can only be described —or rather, clunkily termed— equally "a sort of dub/hip-hop/lo-fi indie/world music hybrid". Woah.

Damon Albarn and Snoop Dogg at Glastonbury 2010. Getty Images.

Of class, from the early on days, Gorillaz has identified with the hip hop genre, with songs featuring rap breaks from artists such as American hip-hop group De La Soul on the acclaimed vocal 'Feel Skilful Inc.', and Del the Funky Homosapien on 'Clint Eastwood' (Snoop Dogg even fabricated a cameo appearance during Eastwood at the group's operation at Glastonbury 2010, and featured on the later single 'Hollywood').

But more than recent Gorillaz stuff tends to lean more towards a audio that can't be categorised according to traditional established music genres. My erstwhile iTunes even struggles to classify the genre, opting for 'Other' or simply, 'Unknown Genre'. In an commodity for Music Feeds, writer Cyclone Wehner referred to the ring as "eccentrically postmodern"—whatever that means. Annihilation referred to every bit 'postmodern' is as vague as it gets. Wehner also cited Gorillaz' 2017 album Humanz as "a disco dystopia album"—a description that really only serves to demonstrate the author'south ingemination abilities and loosely hint at a kind of mood, without actually informing naïve listeners of the album'southward actual sound.

Still, what really establishes Gorillaz as boundary-crossing musicians is the virtual, video attribute to their work. AllMusic cited the ring equally the "first virtual hip-hop group" with four animated members living in a fictional universe: '2-D' the keyboardist and vocalist, 'Murdoc' the bassist, 'Russel' the drummer, and 'Noodle' the guitarist (created and voiced by Albarn, Hewlett, and an extensive list of high-profile collaborators). While the cartoonish virtual band provides a critical commentary on the notion of 'manufactured pop' that was becoming increasingly popular at the band'due south inception, it also addresses notions of the real/virtual, sight/audio, use of engineering in music, transmediation and, of course, genre-dabbling. Gorillaz refuses to conform to a single medium, or a single sound.

Shouldn't nosotros bask in this nonconformity? We tin can label the project as radical, innovative, or even postmodern. Sure, do that if you like. Only really, like every other piece of music, Gorillaz' songs are manipulations of sound, crafted and tuned to move united states of america, making u.s. feel an intuitive sense of peace (and delighted puzzlement) in the body. Not the peace of mind we get from words and labels.