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How Gorillaz brought a global listening party to your phone
Gorillaz are having a house party at 500 locations around the globe. The animated band -- brainchild of musician Damon Albarn (Blur) and artist Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl) -- is hosting the unusual audio soirée for its upcoming album launch for Humanz. Just streaming the new music to its recently launched app isn't Gorillaz's style, so instead it's created a sort of musical scavenger hunt that's part Pokémon Go, part concert.
Gorillaz are getting a TV show, apparently
Prepare your brain's weirdest synapses for an animated TV show starring the members of Gorillaz, the lauded cartoon hip hop group led by Blur frontman Damon Albarn and Tank Girl co-creator Jamie Hewlett. Hewlett revealed the TV series in an interview with Q Magazine, as spotted by Pitchfork. The announcement is light on details, but the show will apparently span 10 episodes and Hewlett is in charge of all things animation.
Gorillaz iPad album, called The Fall, out now
As promised, the new Gorillaz album showed up online over Christmas, and it's available for download right now. The album is called The Fall, and you can listen to one of the 15 tracks, called "Phoner to Arizona," embedded after the break. The whole record was made completely with an iPad, and CNN has a list of apps used to make the album, including Amplitube, Mugician (written by a TUAW commenter), and Moog's Filtatron, among quite a few others. I just gave "Phoner to Arizona" a listen, and it's ... weird. Weirder than I thought -- the Gorillaz are already pretty trippy, but this seems much more like an experiment than an actual album. Still, it's worth a listen, and it's an impressive feat to build a whole album using just Apple's iPad. Again, you can hear it for free on the Gorillaz' website, or join their fan club to download it yourself. [via Engadget]
Gorillaz iPad album coming for free on Christmas
If you were excited to hear that Gorillaz and Blur frontman Damon Albarn has made an album completely on the iPad, get ready to have a very merry Christmas: it's coming out on December 25th, Christmas Day, and Albarn is giving it away for completely free. On Christmas Eve, the band will release a new video for one of the songs, and then on the holiday itself, fans will be able to get the whole album for free. And why is Albarn releasing it right away on Christmas Day? "If I left it until the New Year to release it," he tells the media, "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." In other words, he wants to make sure that when people hear this album, they really do believe it was made completely on an iPad. That's pretty awesome. Can't wait to hear the album -- apparently it'll be part of the Advent Calendar running on the website right now, so go sign up there if you want to be ready.
Damon Albarn making next Gorillaz album completely on an iPad
Musicians love the iPad -- it's a powerful computer with an intuitive interface, and that turns Apple's tablet into one of the best musical instruments (both real and virtual) around. Now, Damon Albarn, formerly of Blur and now frontman for the band Gorillaz, has become a fan as well. He tells NME that he's making a brand new record completely on the revolutionary and magical device. "I hope I'll be making the first record on an iPad," he said. "I fell in love with my iPad as soon as I got it, so I've made a completely different kind of record." That sounds interesting -- the album is apparently an official Gorillaz album (Albarn frequently collaborates with all kinds of artists for the "band's" music), and Albarn says it should be out sometime soon, "before Christmas." We'll have to look forward to it -- all of the iPad music we've heard so far sounds great, and it'll be intriguing to see what kinds of decisions Albarn makes just by working on an iPad. [via 9to5Mac]
