There are also moments of plaintive beauty when Albarn strips it down to his voice and piano. There is a devilish almost industrial glint to their demon eyes that retain the phat grooves but with an added power and darkness. Their dance grooves have been cranked on steroids. There’s a 100 000 people here in the sultry Quebec evening at the wonderful festival d’ete that is celebrating its 50th anniversary with an astonishing ten day festival that costs about fifty quid to go to and is played out in an arena in the French Canadian capital’s city centre park with the best PA I have ever heard at a zillion festivals I have been to. This is a band at the top of their game…and yet you could still dance to it! And tonight thousands did. In 2017 this means hip hop is key with its daredevil embracing of whatever it needs to create the noise that it wants and this ideas thrust and edge is created by onstage guests like Pusha T and Vince Staples who rush the stage and guest on the later part of the set adding a whole different dynamic to the already thrilling show
In the middle of the multi media avalanche though there is a perfect English melody and melancholy jarring perfectly with the thrust and confidence and pop culture cut up of hip hop and a dayglo technicolor 21st century technological wizardry backdropping a dystopian party…Where the visuals are part of the set list, where cartoon characters feel real and a band explodes out of the visual trickery… Live Gorillaz is a high dayglo rush of of image and ideas, shards and skree of pop culture bricolage. ‘That was a bit very special…’ dayglo technicolor 21st century technological wizardry backdropping a dystopian party… like watching a future cartoon turning into flesh….on steroids…īang on the new millennium moment and far away from the claustrophobia of trad rock formats like the rigidity of the four piece band Gorillaz are operating beyond the law.