Gorillaz have appeared as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live for the first time ever – check out the footage below.
Last night (March 7), Damon Albarn and co. guested on an episode hosted by Ryan Gosling, just over a week after the release of their star-studded ninth album ‘The Mountain’.
They played their 2001 debut single ‘Clint Eastwood’, complete with a guest appearance from Del the Funky Homosapien, and later returned with ‘The Moon Cave’ from ‘The Mountain’, for which they were joined by Asha Puthli, Black Thought and Anoushka Shankar.
Watch both performances here:
Earlier in the SNL episode, Harry Styles gatecrashed Gosling’s opening monologue to tease his own hosting duties next weekend.
Much of Gorillaz’ new album was recorded in India during a time when both Albarn and Jamie Hewlett were travelling to find peace after the passing of their fathers, and the record finds their cartoon counterparts similarly on a journey around the world in pursuit of “mystical music making”.
In keeping with the record’s theme of death and healing, it features several guest voices from beyond the grave, including Afrobeat percussion legend Tony Allen, The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, D12 rapper Proof, Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack and De La Soul’s Dave Jolicoeur.
Others to make appearances include IDLES, Sparks, Yasiin Bey (FKA Mos Def), Gruff Rhys, The Clash’s Paul Simonon, Anoushka Shankar and Johnny Marr.
In a four-star review of ‘The Mountain’, NME wrote: “‘The Mountain’ is an album that celebrates the love you leave behind, the people you touch, the spirit of giving more than you take, how we’re all the same when it’s done. As Albarn puts it ‘Orange County’: “I’m not your enemy, your atoms gone, you stand alone, and everything you gave to someone you love – that’s the hardest thing”.
This month, Gorillaz will head out on a UK and Ireland tour that includes a one-off headline show at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on June 20 – something that Albarn made a recent quip at.
Before the Tottenham gig, the band will also play some warm-up shows in Bradford, and from there will make stops at numerous European festivals over the summer, including Electric Picnic, Primavera Sound Barcelona and Porto, and Rock Werchter. Visit here for tickets.
Elsewhere, Albarn has confirmed that he is writing the score for a new Luca Guadagnino movie, which centres on the founders of ChatGPT.
