Welcome to the World of the P...by Various Artists

Virtual band headed up by Blur's Damon Albarn. This climate conscious track features Snoop. gorillaz.com

*CELEBRATING THE MUSIC FROM 2010 TODAY! Damon Albarn got the idea for Plastic Beach while on a beach next to his house: "I was just looking for all the plastic within the sand", he said. On September 17th, 2008, Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett announced that they would be doing another Gorillaz album; Hewlett said that from their work on Monkey, "we just learned more about what we do, musically and artistically. That's a great place to come at when we come to another Gorillaz album. It doesn't have to be animation and music." He also expressed annoyance at having to draw the band members again: "I'm so f---ing bored of drawing those characters. But then we had a moment where we had a new angle on it... I'm gonna adapt them." In a later interview Hewlett said: "they'll be the same characters, but a little bit older and told in a different way." Albarn said in September 2008 that he wanted "to work with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people." As with previous Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach features collaborations with several artists; it features Snoop Dogg, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, sinfonia ViVA and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. bit.ly

Snoop has been unafraid to explore different genres of music, he's recorded reggae and country albums.

Damon Albarn got the idea for Plastic Beach while on a beach next to his house: "I was just looking for all the plastic within the sand", he said. On September 17th, 2008, Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett announced that they would be doing another Gorillaz album; Hewlett said that from their work on Monkey, "we just learned more about what we do, musically and artistically. That's a great place to come at when we come to another Gorillaz album. It doesn't have to be animation and music." He also expressed annoyance at having to draw the band members again: "I'm so f---ing bored of drawing those characters. But then we had a moment where we had a new angle on it... I'm gonna adapt them." In a later interview Hewlett said: "they'll be the same characters, but a little bit older and told in a different way." Albarn said in September 2008 that he wanted "to work with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people." As with previous Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach features collaborations with several artists; it features Snoop Dogg, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, sinfonia ViVA and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. bit.ly

Damon Albarn got the idea for Plastic Beach while on a beach next to his house: "I was just looking for all the plastic within the sand", he said. On September 17th, 2008, Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett announced that they would be doing another Gorillaz album; Hewlett said that from their work on Monkey, "we just learned more about what we do, musically and artistically. That's a great place to come at when we come to another Gorillaz album. It doesn't have to be animation and music." He also expressed annoyance at having to draw the band members again: "I'm so f---ing bored of drawing those characters. But then we had a moment where we had a new angle on it... I'm gonna adapt them." In a later interview Hewlett said: "they'll be the same characters, but a little bit older and told in a different way." Albarn said in September 2008 that he wanted "to work with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people." As with previous Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach features collaborations with several artists; it features Snoop Dogg, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, sinfonia ViVA and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. bit.ly

Damon Albarn got the idea for Plastic Beach while on a beach next to his house: "I was just looking for all the plastic within the sand", he said. On September 17th, 2008, Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett announced that they would be doing another Gorillaz album; Hewlett said that from their work on Monkey, "we just learned more about what we do, musically and artistically. That's a great place to come at when we come to another Gorillaz album. It doesn't have to be animation and music." He also expressed annoyance at having to draw the band members again: "I'm so f---ing bored of drawing those characters. But then we had a moment where we had a new angle on it... I'm gonna adapt them." In a later interview Hewlett said: "they'll be the same characters, but a little bit older and told in a different way." Albarn said in September 2008 that he wanted "to work with an incredibly eclectic, surprising cast of people." As with previous Gorillaz albums, Plastic Beach features collaborations with several artists; it features Snoop Dogg, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E. Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, sinfonia ViVA and the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. bit.ly

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Damon Albarn got the idea for Plastic Beach while on a beach next to his house: "I was just looking for all the plastic within the sand." Then, the first time Albarn went to Mali, he was taken to a landfill where he saw people "taking every little bit, a little bit of fabric to the fabric regenerators, or the metal and the cans to the ironsmiths and the aluminium recyclers, and it goes on and by the time you get to the road, they're selling stuff." When Albarn went to a landfill outside London to record the sound of seagulls for the album, he noticed a juxtaposition between the way the two countries dealt with rubbish. They've got more snakes... like adders, grass snakes, slow worms, toads, frogs, newts, all kinds of rodents, all kinds of squirrels, a massive number of squirrels, foxes, and obviously, seagulls.

"This is part of the new ecology. And for the first time I saw the world in a new way. I've always felt, I'm trying to get across on this new record, the idea that plastic, we see it as being against nature but it's come out of nature. We didn't create plastic, nature created plastic. And just seeing the snakes like living in the warmth of decomposing plastic bags. They like it. It was a strange kind of optimism that I felt... but trying to get that into pop music is a challenge, anyway. But important." bit.ly

The band will be playing next door at Key Arena on 9/30. This track features Snoop Dogg.

Damon Albarn expects the new Gorillaz's album to come out sometime in 2017

Damon Albarn has confirmed that a new Gorillaz album is on the way, due for release next year

Featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg

Feat. Snoop Dogg

Of his travels to Mali with his love, artist Suzi Winstanley, Damon Albarn recounted, "It was just a really inspiring, colourful, bright, gorgeous place, you know? Apart from the music, which really is like a river that flows through Bamako [Mali's capital], I think the recycling market was the thing that stayed with me. It's just so huge… You have women and children essentially, in temperatures up to 100 degrees, on the rubbish, picking out anything that has some use… they take the plastic and metal and rubber, and that's given to cleaners and renderers and preparers, and then down to where the road is, where there are ploughs, and rockets, and computers, all for sale. It's shocking in the sense that you think, 'This is really hard work.' But it's very practical. And extremely honest, and very productive. And if you could translate that humility, and ingenuity – well, there are lessons for all of us." www.theguardian.com

Featuring Snoop!

feat. Snoop Dogg. gorillaz.com