Music Review - Song Machine

British animated band Gorillaz (created by masterminds Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett) recently dropped a song to kickstart their new project, Song Machine. This album is looking as if it is going to be unlike most of what Gorillaz have released in the last few years. The idea behind Song Machine is that the duo will team up with different artists and experiment with different genres of music. The project will follow a season by season format, where each season will have a couple of songs and animated clips featuring different artists. The project will also include appearances from the iconic animated members of The Gorillaz: 2-D, Noodle, Murdoc and Russel. In the video for the first song released - Momentary Bliss - the animated members are shown dancing alongside Albarn. These two halves of the band don’t usually meet, so watching the video might be a strange experience for fans, many of whom consider the two halves to be very separate.

So far, the song Momentary Bliss has been the only song released. It is one of my favourite Gorillaz songs to be released in the last few years, which is saying something because I have loved the band’s last two albums. Momentary Bliss is a cohesive mixture of the styles of the Gorillaz’s previous two albums but also contains features that are new for the band, like the enjoyable slow rhythm at the beginning and end of the song. This part of the song was accompanied by the smooth vocals of the band Slaves, who were also stepping out of their normal style for the song. Slowthai’s rap juxtaposed with the relaxed beat and kept the listener on edge, tying the experience together. The video showed Damon Albarn, Slaves and Slowthai recording alongside the animated band (2-d, Noodle, Russel and Murdoc) with other interesting visuals popping up around on the screen. While having the animated and real-life band sharing the screen was something new for Gorillaz, the doodly style created the trippy visuals which are a common image used by the band.

The only other future artist combination that has been hinted at by the band so far is a project with Tame Impala. Gorillaz’s fictional guitarist Noodle posted a photoshop of the band’s first album cover mixed with Tame Impalas’ album “current” on her Instagram, which seems to suggest a collaboration of some sort. This will be a cool project if it happens, because it might bring Gorillaz to Australia for the first time since the Plastic Beach tour. Recently Gorillaz released a clip telling fans to keep an eye out for their ‘closest song machine’ - referring to the various social media pages created to release updates about their forthcoming music - because they will be releasing a new song soon. Hopefully this will be the Tame Impala collaboration! The Song Machine project is going to be an interesting combination of old and new for Gorillaz, and it sounds like we will be hearing more from the band before the end of the month. Fans should be prepared to experience some of what they love about the band as well as exploration of different styles and features.