Chaos and rebirth on Gorillaz's India-inspired ninth album

In a New Delhi studio, flautist Ajay Prasanna finishes a take and turns to look through the control room window. On the other side of the glass, he sees Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett sitting quietly, tears rolling down their eyes. No words are spoken. The music—a classic Gorillaz electro-hop tune threaded with delicate strands of Indian classical flute—has done the talking.

Moments like this shaped The Mountain, the animated band’s ninth album. Inspired by and recorded during “two classic Indian odysseys”, the album finds Albarn and Hewlett taking their famously shape-shifting project into new territory—weaving Indian instruments and spiritual symbolism into songs haunted by grief, memory and rebirth.

There are intimate reckonings with personal loss (both suffered bereavements while working on the album) and meditations on the futility of conflict, all set to a globe-trotting soundtrack that features collaborators from across cultures, continents and decades.

“We were carrying a lot of very strong and confusing emotions around with us, and India is a gift when you’re trying to make sense of internal conflict and grief,” says Albarn, speaking over Zoom from his home in South Devon (“the Cote D’Azur of England” he jokes). Hewlett joins us from Normandy, right across the English channel.

“[India] opens up the possibility that everything is part of an inevitable, endless, reincarnated thing,” Albarn continues. “So you don’t feel that death is quite so final.”

It’s heavy material for a cartoon band that began its life in a shared Notting Hill bachelor pad. Watching MTV one day, the two flatmates conceived The Gorillaz as a way to, essentially, take the mickey out of the manufactured boy-bands they were seeing on the screen.

“I was also excited to try something completely new and do it anonymously, which was our initial intention,” says Albarn. “Philosophically, the idea of disappearing allowed me to approach making music in a very different way.”

They immediately got to work, Albarn heading into the studio to write and record music, while Hewlett sketched out rough drafts of the band’s cartoon members—2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodles and Russel Hobbs. They created an elaborate origin story for the band, which included giving Russel the ability to contact, even raise, the dead (which becomes relevant later).

Their 2001 self-titled debut—which incorporates sounds from trip-hop, dub, punk and Latin music—ended up being a massive commercial success, selling over 7 million copies worldwide. It would go on to feature on a number of “album of the year” lists, and would later be ranked as one of the top 100 albums of the 2000s by publications such as Complex, Consequence of Sound and Slant magazine.

“It was just going to be a one-off idea,” says Hewlett. “But it was so well received that we thought we’d do another one. And here we still are, 25 years later.”

The band’s next two albums—Demon Days (2005) and Plastic Beach (2010)—rounded off a legendary three-record run, before the two had a brief falling out in 2012, leading to a six-year hiatus.

“I think anyone who’s in a long-standing creative relationship has times where they start thinking that they don’t need each other, that you can do it yourself,” says Albarn. “But the truth is that there’s nothing nicer and more rewarding than doing something together that’s good, you know?”

The duo soon reunited, releasing new records including Humanz (2018) and Cracker Island (2023), which were generally well-received though none quite replicated the magic of their 2000s run. The Mountain, they say, is the closest they’ve come to recapturing the creative alchemy of their early records.

“We really connected on a strong level on this one,” says Albarn. “I think we’ve remembered, again, what it is to make a great Gorillaz record.”

The initial inspiration for The Mountain came in late 2022, when Hewlett’s mother-in-law was hospitalised in Jaipur—where she and his wife were attending an Ayurveda retreat—after suffering a stroke. He spent nearly two months in the pink city, visiting his comatose mother-in-law in the ICU and trying to figure out how to fly her back to France. It was traumatic, but Hewlett found himself falling in love with Jaipur.

“I came back very inspired and excited, though also saddened by that experience,” he says. “So when I saw Damon next, I told him we just had to go to India, and he agreed.”

On their first trip, they visited Jaipur, New Delhi and Mumbai, taking in the sights and sounds and looking for whatever inspiration they could find. Just before they returned for a second visit, tragedy struck again—both of them last their fathers, ten days apart. With that grief looming large over their trip, they found solace in Hindu ideas about death and the afterlife, particularly reincarnation. Albarn even brought his father’s ashes with him, immersing them into the Ganges at Benaras.

“Indian culture and philosophy is quantum,” says Albarn, with all the sincerity of a new convert. “In the sense that it allows the intangible to exist coherently with the tangible.”

It would have been all too easy for India to become the exotic backdrop to the English duo’s Eat Pray Love journey, but The Mountain largely—if not always—avoids that minefield, thanks to a lot of research and the collaborative efforts of some of the biggest names in Indian music. Asha Bhosle and eccentric disco diva Asha Puthli make an appearance, while Anoushka Shankar’s sitar and Ajay Prasanna’s flute are sprinkled over multiple tracks.

“I felt a kinship with the themes because as someone with South Asian roots, ideas about life, death and rebirth were part of my upbringing,” says Puthli, who sings on the delightful post-disco cut The Moon Cave. “I’ve been circling these themes for decades. I saw the Moon Cave as a timeless portal: a space where love travels freely across dimensions, where nothing is really lost.”

Other songs feature contributions by the Bangash brothers of the Gwalior gharana, and even a Jaipur wedding band on The Manifesto.

“We had 60 musicians in a tiny room, all trying to learn the same motif at the same time, but in slightly different keys,” remembers Albarn. “It was madness. Chaos.”

These collaborators were joined by others from across the world—including Argentinian rapper Teuno, The Roots’ frontman Black Thought and The Smiths’ Johnny Marr—as well as some who made an appearance from beyond the grave. The late Dennis Hopper’s voice is the first voice you hear on the titular sitar-flute-tabla opener, while Tony Allen, Bobby Womack, Dave Joliceur and others also make posthumous contributions, taken from outtakes from previous recording sessions.

“I just wanted them to be around,” says Albarn, who says the search for old out-takes felt a little like a treasure hunt. “If the record was going to have a central theme of death and rebirth, then we needed everybody. The living and the dead.”

Hewlett, meanwhile, set out to capture the vibrant colour and chaos of urban India. A set of photographs taken by Blair Brown became the backdrop on which he doodled the band’s members as levitating sadhus, cyber-punk wedding band horn players and bandana-clad dacoits. The album’s release last week was accompanied by an eight-minute hand-animated short film that draws generously from the Jungle Book.

“I wanted to draw the Hindu gods, because that’s so inspiring, so I did a lot of research on how to approach that without offending,” says Hewlett. “India, visually, was kind of mind-blowing for me, and we’ve still only just scratched the surface of what it has to offer.” .”

Though it can't always resist the temptation to fall into culture-flattening cliches, The Mountain is nevertheless a testament to Albarn and Hewlett’s audacious creative ambition, and their ability to create fantastical, multi-cultural sound-worlds. It’s a record full of introspective meditations on mortality and legacy, set to surprisingly bright and upbeat globalist-pop, and one that has already earned plenty of critical acclaim.

With the album just out, the duo are looking ahead to the next album, with a concept already in mind. They’re also prepping for a world tour. But what they’re most excited about is returning to India, this time to play The Mountain live for their Indian fans.

“The opportunity to come and play in India has put a smile on everyone’s face,” says Albarn.