Gorillaz Are Ten - Spotify Radio Show 3 (3)

Get off!
Get off!
Shush!

That was Superfast Jellyfish from Plastic Beach by, um, oh, um, that's by Gorillaz
My band
And also, I think that was one of the first tracks I wrote for Plastic Beach
Plastic Beach, what an album
So, I burnt down comms, skipped the country, and set up my brand-new studio
Built a fantastic new HQ on top of the floating landmass of garbage
I'd found in the middle of the ocean
Took me ages to find that place, but I, I, I needed a secret location
Somewhere not even Google could find me

Had a whole bunch of goons on my tail, really nasty times
You know, murderers and assassins and the like
All of 'em tryna do me in
So, I just needed to get my head down, you know, somewhere off the radar for a while

It was just a giant piece of rotten plastic in the middle of nowhere
Funny thing was that it looked idyllic from far away through the binoculars
A floating paradise
But once you got closer, you could see it was just landfill, grease, garbage
Destruction, rusty old pipes and dumped bits of plastic
That didn't bother me though
I painted the whole thing bright pink and got on with it
I thought it was bliss
The solitude, the peace

When I first got there, I just wandered up and down, kicking the landscape
Looking out into the night sky, playing with the echoes
And marbling at the enormity of the universe
You wouldn't believe the view of the stars from out there
Just amazing

Anyway, I didn't need a studio at first
Initially I just started twanging away on logic really alone
Me, my bass and a crate of rum sat on the beach
Just wobbling along to my spongy dub rhythms and recording it straight onto my laptop
Happy days, eh?

And that's probably when I came up with that superfast track
Bit by bit again, I started sketching out tracks and demos
I thought this, "This" would be the album, the really big one
I would take little portraits, musical snapshots of the whole world
And assemble them together into one cohesive, vibrant vision

The nutty one from the inside of my head
And that album would be Plastic Beach
It would be epic in its ambition
Historical in its depth, breadth and focus
Plastic Beach would be a microcosm of the entire globe
And I thought, where better to start than one of the oldest civilizations known to man?
First stop, Syria

This is White Flag featuring Bastian Keno from the UK
And the National Orchestra for Arabic Music
A grimy wind blowing dancehall music over Arabic orchestras
That's not the type of thing you hear every day on top of the pots now, is it?
White Flag by me, Gorillaz
Move along inside the bus