Listen to the entire Gorillaz album now!

The Now Now, Gorillaz's new album has been streaming live in its entirety today, following a concert in Tokyo to the fans. Watch it below now!

Damon Albarn on Gorillaz's low-key album (featuring Noel Gallagher) The Now Now

So Damon Albarn has finally opened up about his mysterious new Gorillaz album, The Now Now. According to a recent interview, "Unlike so many of their previous releases, the band’s latest, The Now Now (due June 29), is a comparatively intimate affair, minus the usual wide-ranging guest roster — Humanz alone featured Noel Gallagher, De La Soul, Vince Staples, Popcaan, and Grace Jones, among others — and attendant Mt. Everest of studio coordination such a major undertaking involves.

Frontman Damon Albarn, who turned 50 this spring, was happy to swerve into Now‘s simpler, more stripped-down territory, enlisting drop-ins from just a few select friends (Snoop Dogg and 75-year-old jazz-guitar legend George Benson), and production by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Mumford & Sons, Depeche Mode) and longtime collaborator Remi Kabaka."

Quoting from his latest interview in June 2018, Albarn says:

”This record was really easy to make. I did it in a month with just James Ford and Remi, and finished it at the end of February, which, that’s quite nice, you know?”

The album is mostly sung by Damon Albarn himself, instead of his usual hiding behind the multiple collaborators that made Gorillaz famous.

 “So if you don’t like my voice, it’s probably not worth investigating this record. If you do like my voice, I would strongly recommend you buy it. Not that it’s so divisive, but it’s an acquired taste, really.”

“My voice has gotten a lot better,” Albarn said. “A lot richer and deeper, I think. [But] I wouldn’t say I like it. I’m permanently dissatisfied, period, with what I do. I have little glimpses when I’m making something, like, ‘Ahhhh, I love this! This is great!’ And then that moment ends and I just sort of return to, ‘Am I ever really gonna find — I don’t know what it is, but am I ever really gonna find it?’ I don’t know.”

“The record’s all over the place, really,” he says, “but mainly, it’s songs written from the tops of buildings or on buses in America.” One track, “Idaho,” was in fact inspired by a specific trip out West. “We’d just played Red Rocks, so it was on the way from there to Seattle. We spent two days up in the mountains in this very beautiful place, very disconnected — almost like a land that time forgot.

I’ve visited the States a lot, but it’s the first time I actually paused in the great vast wilderness that is America. I couldn’t get enough of it, actually.” Those tracks called “Kansas” and “Hollywood” though? Don’t read too much into them. While he did book a recording session in an appropriately louche hotel penthouse overlooking Sunset Boulevard, “There’s no actual connection,” he says. “Sometimes my original GarageBand [software] titles just stay. I know where the words came from, but not why.”

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So apart from being inspired by America, what's next for Albarn? Lots, according to him.

“I’ve made two records this year so far,” he says. Well, technically it’s three. Gorillaz, one from the Good, the Bad, & the Queen, and a collaboration with South African artists. “I mean it’s only June,” he says, “and I’ve been in South Africa, I’ve been in Mali, I’ve been all over South America… Mali is fascinating, and I just keep going back there. It has a very strong classical tradition with a lot of complicated music that you have to learn from a very young age.

I struggle with some of it, I really do, but I love that about it. I’m just learning how to become adequate on the balafon, and I ended up having lessons with a 12-year-old prodigy, an absolute genius… I’ll actually be doing something soon in Mali and in Paris about Sundiata, who was a sort of semi-mythical first emperor.”

Damon Albarn drops New Gorillaz Song Tomorrow and album in June 29th 2018

Head's up- a new Gorillaz song will be dropping tomorrow and it's going to be fantastic. According to NME, there will be a new album out next month (June 29 2018) so fans won't have to wait long for new tracks to be on the way!

Over the weekend, it was announced that a mysterious website had been launched which led fans to believe that Gorillaz were set to release something in late June. After fans followed a website address found on a series of cryptic posters around London’s All Points East festival, they discovered a site which played a brief clip, showing off band member 2-D playing a guitar, while the words “The Now Now” are flashed on the screen.

Although fans are speculating, the group remained silent on the matter, not confirming whether or not ‘The Now Now’ was the name of a song, album, or something else entirely.

As a source reports, the wife of Gorillaz’ graphic designer Jamie Hewlett, has confirmed the new album, sharing a post on Instagram which shows the artwork, and reveals that fans will only have to wait a month before it drops.

While Jamie Hewlett revealed last year that Gorillaz were planning to release a new album rather quickly to avoid falling into another period of inactivity, the group kept rather quiet about everything until earlier this month, when it was reported that Albarn had left the new album in a London taxi. “It was a disaster,” explained an unnamed source. “Damon oversees everything and, with Gorillaz, it’s not just audio – it’s the expensive visuals as well. The laptop’s contents are priceless.”

Who's excited for the news?

Watch 2 clips of the potential songs Hollywood and Idaho on the new album in which Albarn debuted recently.