Gorillaz aren't fooling anyone with this cartoon business. They may have presented themselves as a fictional animated band, but let's look at their self-titled debut album for what it really is: A creative holiday for Blur singer Damon Albarn and U.S. hip-hop producer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura.

The cartoon is a cute enough red herring, though, and it frees up Albarn and The Automator for their genre-bending exploration of electro-pop, hip-hop, dub reggae, and -- thanks to a special appearance by Cuba's Ibrahim Ferrer on Latin Simone -- bolero. Rapper Del Tha Funky Homosapien, Cibo Matto's Miho Hatori and ex-Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club veteran Tina Weymouth also put in appearances.

The results are unpredictable, irreverent and tuneful -- well beyond the kind of self-gratifying exercise one might expect when two admitted record geeks cut loose for a bit of recording in Jamaica. Albarn isn't so blinded by the prospect of making a dub album that he forgets his rock leanings, and tunes Punk and M1A1 pay homage to pre-punk pioneers Can and Jonathan Richman while echoing Popscene-era Blur.

Even at their most musically far-reaching, Gorillaz never lose the sense of fun that obviously inspired the disc in the first place.

The downside is that some of these sonic doodles should have landed in The Automator's recycle bin instead of working their way onto the sprawling disc. Despite a current marketing campaign that's so aggressive it borders on Napoleonic, Gorillaz don't have much in the way of hit-material, beyond the dead-catchy singles Tomorrow Comes Today and Clint Eastwood.

Saturday, April 28, 2001

Blur singer's new 'toon