•The Gorillaz are visual project rock band, formed in 1998 by Damon Albarn previously from Blur and Jamie Hewlett. The band immediately stood out as different and caught a lot of interest as the band projected themselves as animated characters, and by doing this never revealed their identity in music videos or even when performing. This was unusual as the audience were unaware of the bands appearance they were listening to.
This band has four animated members: 2D (lead vocalist, keyboard, and melodica), Murdoc Niccals (bass guitar and drum machine), Noodle (guitar, keyboard, and occasional vocals) and Russel Hobbs (drums and percussion). These four animated characters would represent each member of the band, with Damon Albarn being the only permanent member that has been involved from the begging to present.
The band are difficult to pin to a particular music genre, as work they have produced has touched all music genres of alternative rock, dub, hip-hop, electronic and pop music.
Gorillaz create a hyper real world by having animated cartoon characters as the faces of the band, and because the animations represent a different band member and stay the same throughout videos and live performances. From this the audience recognises the same animations that they are shown until the characters and their world are seen acceptable and we as the audience are drawn in to expect this and see it as the norm with this band.
The bands videos agree with the postmodern sensibility that anything can be considered cool and ironic as we would not expect the band we are listening to to be like they are portrayed to the audience, by hiding their appearance and we accept this as what they are because that’s what we have been shown from the start.
One of the main songs the band produced was ‘Feel good inc’ and the music video had scenes that shown it was created on older material. The video features scenes that show some of it has been produced using older imagery, as we it crosses strange looking animations that have a modern and futuristic twist with classic acoustic guitars which you would not associate the two together.
During the bands early years when they first created this virtual band, even played live performances behind the animations and the cartoon characters to keep the audiences believing the bands existence to be part of a created hyper- real world. The band would perform behind the stage and would show the audience the characters they recognise to be the band from the videos they have seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF9fqx4H_Cg- Fell Good Inc video
Damon Albarn who features in the band has almost taken himself out of context by completely changing the music being produced to what we were used to from Blur. Fans of Blur could not want to listen to Gorillaz because they are a completely different genre of music to what they might of expected.
It backs up Kramer’s theory by ‘embracing contradictions’ as the animations we are shown are not the image we would immediately put with the type of music they play, but we accept it because that is what we are shown.
In the songs there are over voices of laughing which sound creepy and weird as it appears during quiet parts of the song. This again changes the genre and even the mood but does suit a music video which we would expects to see these characters in.
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