From the shuffle mode

Damon Albarn is one of those creative musical geniuses, yet not many outside of the music nerd contingent know who he is by name.

However, mention the animated Gorillaz, or the song "Feel Good Inc" and you may get an oh yeah! I know that song! response.

I've been listening to Gorillaz "Demon Days" quite a bit lately, and find these songs to be wonderfully catchy and lushly produced techno-pop without making me want to perform a labotamy with a plastic spork.

Albarn effectively created an "Archies" for today's generation. With the help of Jamie Hewlett of Tank Girl fame, numerous guest musicians and some great songs, he's put out no less than 5 cds worth of material, some fantastic videos (animated, of course!), and now there's a documentary being released of the making of the band (called "Bananaz")

What today's young Gorillaz fans may not realize is that Damon Albarn has been making music for 20 years, and was singer/songwriter for the band Blur who incidently also put out some amazing pop music in the 1990's.

I do, however, know more than a few Blur fans who are also big Gorillaz fans so I do know I'm not alone in my fawning fangirl behavior.

Here's the video for the song "Dare" from Demon Days.



and this... a gem from the 90's - Blur's "Parklife".




Official Gorillaz site

Gorillaz wikipedia entry