It’s been more than two years since the British group released their record ‘Cracker Island’ in 2023. Stepping into a cultural dimension, with new instrumental thrills that pivot into Indian notes, the band recently made their return with their ninth studio album, ‘The Mountain’ – a carefully curated project that marries a variety of regenerative sounds and blends the light and darkness of life.
Across its one-hour-plus-long runtime, ‘The Mountain’ provides a platform for different cultural traditions and an array of voices, making an optimistic turn into a new soundscape. The album features artists from a range of backgrounds, including Anoushka Shankar, Jalen Ngonda, IDLES, and the legendary Syrian singer Omar Souleyman, and is inspired by the death of Damon Albarn’s father, who had a fascinating love for Indian music, and especially loved Indian sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar, the father of featuring artist Anoushka Shankar. Introducing a new experience in every track, the record emits the vulnerability of Gorillaz alongside serving as an ecstatic celebration of reinvention, departing as a monument to sorrow, India and interconnectivity.
The 15-track LP opens with the self-titled song, ‘The Mountain’, establishing the Indian aesthetic with a bansuri, sitar and soft percussion. Co-creator Jamie Hewitt describes it as, “almost like a lullaby, but almost like the beginning of life, or the beginning of a story”. The atmospheric piece is an ode to classic Indian instrumentalisation and a reflection of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewitt’s time spent in the country. As the record continues, the tracks dip into pop and funk, with a mixture of artists, including the late rapper David Jolicoeur in ‘The Moon Cave’. Additionally, Damon Albarn also dug through the band’s archives and brought forward posthumous recordings of late artists such as Bobby Womack, Proof, Tony Allen and more, which ultimately uphold the album’s subject of death and mortality. As a result, Gorillaz’s latest project tastefully maintains an upbeat, life-affirming sound that is littered with drops of numbness, feelings of loss and the weight of life.
Each instrument and voice is integral to the structure of ‘The Mountain’, especially shining through the 7-minute track, ‘The Manifesto’, featuring Argentine rapper Trueno and a powerful verse by rap legend Proof. The song dances between Spanish and American rap and elements of Indian and reggaeton instrumentals, highlighting the ways in which Albarn produces a melting pot of differing styles and decades of music through collaboration and emotion, uniting listeners around the world in a playfully unpredictable way, as he states: “For me, that’s the most important thing about Gorillaz. It’s something that’s intergenerational, and regenerates through the imaginations of the people that embrace it.”
As the album begins to fade into the last few tracks, we are brought back to the soft, richly textured landscape that is cradled by Indian instrumentals and provides a melancholic resolution to its journey. And whilst starting a new musical chapter, the record is an inspiringly riveting return to the Gorillaz sound. With a reflection of mortality woven into its subtext, we join Gorillaz in a multilingual microcosm that is a mosaic of creative cohesion and vulnerability.
Written by Raabia Haq
GEM Magazine 