Inside the Gorillaz liveexperience

Wed 8th Dec, 2010 in Local News

At long last, the full Gorillaz live experience has arrived on Australian soil after a spectacular run through Europe and North America. With a distinguished cast of guests including De La Soul, Little Dragon and Bobby Womack, plus a huge production including multi-media video, animation and artwork, it’s far from your standard arena show.

It all began in April at the Coachella festival in Indio, California, with the Gorillaz masterminds Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn realising their vision on a grand scale. From all reports, the show has only got better from there. As the enormous cast and crew prepared to bring the Gorillaz to life down under, FasterLouder spoke to tour manager Craig Duffy about how far it has come.

“The whole show has evolved through this year to something that you will probably never see again,” Duffy enthused. “It’s a kind of one-off show that gets put together for a very special event, that somehow, through a freak of time has made it on tour. It just looks, feels and is so much tighter and more polished than our first foray at Coachella. Ask anyone that has seen it.”

The spectacle of Gorillaz live is as much about the “army” of players on-stage as it is about Hewlett’s now-iconic visuals. While a past incarnation of the show kept the band hidden while their cartoon alter-egos played on the big screens, now the “human element” is foregrounded.

FasterLouder’s reviewer described the first stop of the Australian tour as “a complete sensory overload show to the nth degree” and Duffy would be quick to agree “It’s a full-on assault on the senses. There’s so much to see, feel and hear. The human element is of course important, but without great video, lights and sound we would be looking at just another rock show, and this is anything but that.”