Gorillaz album The Mountain exorcises death with Indian music greats

In Western cultures, death is typically treated as linear. A one-way ticket to finality.

Conversely, the Hindu concept of Samsara treats it as a transition in an endless, cyclical journey of birth, death and rebirth.

It’s a belief that underpins the latest project from Gorillaz — the brainchild of Blur frontman Damon Albarn and graphic artist Jamie Hewllett, who’ve always loved a concept.

Their latest? The Mountain, the virtual group’s ninth studio album, which shifts their signature genre-bending, star-studded global pop to India.

“Having a location seems to work quite well for us,” Hewlett tells Double J’s Karen Leng.

“The last time I think we did that was Plastic Beach.”

That would be the 2010 record that gathered Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, half of The Clash and more into an anti-capitalist, pro-environmental commentary masquerading as a shape-shifting musical extravaganza.

In some ways, The Mountain is a spiritual sequel. It’s certainly the most cohesive Gorillaz work since Plastic Beach, feeling more intentional and earnest than their recent string of records.

The Mountain, Gorillaz’s first for their own Kong record label, follows a simple enough premise.

Animated avatars 2D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russell have escaped pop stardom for Mumbai and, “immersed in the rhythms of mystical music-making”, begin a transcendental trek up the titular mountain.

The narrative is realised in an accompanying short film, crafted the old-fashioned way.

“Hand-drawn, no computers,” Hewlett notes, in a sly stab at current AI-leaning trends.

Albarn chips in: “The idea is you sit and listen to the album from beginning to end, look at the artwork and kind of lose yourself and go on the journey.”

The late greats

Across 15 tracks, Gorillaz concoct a cosmopolitan brew, where British musos mix with rappers, rockers and — most prominently — traditional Indian musicians.

The resulting sonic tapestry is expansive, threaded with loss and grief but also life-affirming personality and poignancy.

Its origins begin with a “very, very long narrative, which is quite gloomy and involves a lot of tragic passing,” Albarn explains.

Firstly, Hewlett’s mother-in-law died in 2023, after he and his wife travelled to Jaipur for her final days. A year later, Hewlett and Albarn’s fathers passed within 10 days of each other.

Albarn would end up on the banks of the Ganges River to scatter the ashes of his dad, Keith Albarn, an artist and teacher with a deep love of Hindu music and culture.

“Because it happened to both of us, we felt that there was something driving this record that was important to us and therefore would be important, somehow, in its translation,” Albarn says.

The Mountain wrestles with themes of mortality and resurrection through a wild cast of unexpected special guests, many of whom are no longer alive.

“They are alive really because they’re here with us,” counters Albarn, who culled posthumous performances from studio sessions captured across Gorillaz’s 25-year career.

Dennis Hopper is the first otherworldly voice heard — a call back to the late actor’s role on Gorillaz’s 2005 album Demon Days.

Soul legend Bobby Womack and De La Soul’s Dave ‘Trugoy The Dove’ Jolilcoeur are resurrected for contemplative elegy The Moon Cave.

Meanwhile, post-punk poet Mark E. Smith of The Fall fronts the nocturnal synth-and-strings groove of Delirium.

“It’s this time travel thing when you go back and listen to outtakes and find all these gems,” Albarn says.

“A whole new song was created from what was not used of Mark E. Smith’s [Glitter Freeze session] 12 years ago.

Proof, a rapper from Eminem’s D12 collective who was shot dead in 2016, delivers eerie bars on seven-minute stand-out The Manifesto.

“Beefing with your blocks, that you’re creeping with your Glock, now you’re sleeping in a box,” he raps.

“Someone like Proof, we didn’t expect to have a whole freestyle just there, waiting to be elevated to something else,” Albarn says.

“You feel like he’s right in the room with you.”

The Sweet Prince, a song written days after his father’s death, sees Albarn serenading at his dad’s hospital bed:

“Don’t be sad … the sword you hold in your hand, well it’s mighty blow will set you on your patterned path into the next life.”

It’s a touching moment in a record unafraid to pose profound questions amid its genre-mashing.

“Everything is leaning towards what’s behind the veil? What’s next? What is the afterlife?” Albarn says.

India’s influence and living legends

The presence of Hindustani virtuosos is the most striking new feature to the Gorillaz musical universe.

Recorded in Mumbai, New Delhi, Rajasthan, Varanasi (in addition to locations across the UK, US, Syria and Turkmenistan), The Mountain showcases “all these amazing artists, their legacy and the tradition that they’re part of,” Albarn says.

The cinematic opening title track is arranged with lush melodies from renowned bansuri flautist Ajay Prasanna; the distinctive sounds of sitarist Anoushka Shankar (daughter of Ravi Shankar) and sarod-playing siblings Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash.

Their playing is laced throughout the album, along with the tabla rhythms of percussionist Viraj Acharya.

Elsewhere, The Moon Cave features Indian disco queen Asha Puthli.

“You can place her in Studio 54 dancing with David Bowie,” Albarn enthuses.

Then there’s Bollywood legend Asha Bhosle, who has sung over 12,000 songs in 18 different languages; one of the most recorded voices on the planet.

“I think the most recorded. A beautiful human,” Albarn  says.

Bhosle appears on synth-driven requiem The Shadowy Light, singing in Hindi and urging a boatman to ferry her soul “to the other side, where there’s no joy or sorrow, no victory or loss, where the universe becomes one with me.”

Other passengers boarding the good ship Gorillaz tap into similar ruminations on mortality and spirituality.

“What will be in that world that comes after this one?” 23-year-old Argentine rapper Trueno asks in Spanish on The Manifesto, over a dense rhythm that fuses reggaeton pulse with a percussive bhangra workout.

Black Thought from The Roots (a Gorillaz match so snug, it’s a surprise it hasn’t happened sooner) contributes three athletic, effusive verses expressing philosophical ideas.

The album’s tender elegies are balanced with well-placed bangers, such as Damascus, where Syria’s star Bedouin singer Omar Souleyman punctuates the verses of hip hop eccentric Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def).

Cuts like The God Of Lying (starring gruff Idles vocalist Joe Talbot) and The Plastic Guru (one of several tracks featuring ex-The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr) skewer false prophets — a contemporary political critique made explicit on The Happy Dictator, a team-up with prolific art-pop duo Sparks.

“Wonderful human beings,” Albarn gushes of the latter. 

Ultimately, the A-listers are just as compelling as Albarn’s and Hewlett’s own deeply personal expressions of loss and life.

“You know the hardest thing is to say goodbye to someone you love,” Albarn croons on The Hardest Thing, accompanied by his frequent collaborator, late Afrobeat trailblazer Tony Allen.

That sentiment stretches into Orange County, this album’s version of Gorillaz earworm On Melancholy Hill, pairing chirpy whistling and brass with bittersweet pathos.

Death may have inspired The Mountain’s conception, but not the experience of listening to it.

Just as the album’s cover image — the Gorillaz avatars gazing atop a rocky peak at an endless canopy of clouds — evokes triumphant optimism, making the record was “a wonderful thing to do together,” Hewlett says.

After a quarter-century together, The Mountain feels like the pair looking back over their career as Gorillaz and discovering their own creative renewal.

“It’s important sometimes to rejig the palette, whatever kind of process you are dedicated to,” Albarn says.

“Because, hopefully, you’re learning. And if you’re learning, it means you’re coming out with something that can help people discover more about this wonderful, kaleidoscopic world we live on.

“And how important interconnection is and how … having at least a basic understanding of other cultures is essential in the modern age of half-truth.”

The Mountain is out now.