In a career-spanning sit-down at the "House of Kong" in Los Angeles, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett joined Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to deconstruct their 25-year creative marriage and their latest evolution, The Mountain. For a project that began as a "witness protection" style ruse to "remove the idea of celebrity," the new album marks a return to the "principle of adventure" and a profound "cohesion and storytelling" that Albarn suggests makes it the true spiritual successor to Plastic Beach.
The DNA of The Mountain is inextricably linked to shared trauma. Hewlett recounted a "tough and quite traumatic" period in India caring for his mother-in-law, which sparked the idea for a "Gorillaz record in India." However, the project took a "spooky and weird" turn when both men lost their fathers just ten days apart.
"It does change you," Albarn noted solemnly. Hewlett expanded on the shift: "You lose your father, you move up a level in the grand computer game of life and you become the patriarch... you've had that buffer, a safety zone your entire life, and suddenly that’s gone and you’re like, ‘oh f***.’"
The duo also touched on their aborted Netflix movie, a process Albarn described as "hanging around for what seemed an eternity." Despite being told "you can do whatever you want," the slow pace killed their interest. "It’s not an interesting idea, it’s not an original idea," Hewlett admitted. Instead of waiting, they pivoted back to their primary medium: "We made an album while we were waiting... about hanging around for eternity."
Ultimately, the 25-year journey remains an "ongoing experiment" where the animated characters increasingly mirror their creators. "The stuff that happens to us filters into their stories," Hewlett explained. For Albarn, the connection has become eerily tangible: "It felt weird... like they were just around the corner. They actually did exist."
