JEFF APTER acquires an audience with GORILLAZ co-creator JAMIE HEWLETT and his alter-eg … er … we mean the virtual band’s bassist and svengali, MURDOC. Expect tales of absinthe, cloning band members and stealing organs…

Gorillaz may not actually exist in flesh and blood, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do big. And that’s exactly the case with Plastic Beach, their new, 16-track opus. Originally titled Carousel, it’s been in production since 2007, not long after a spellbinding run of shows at Harlem’s legendary Apollo Theatre. And while Gorillaz have always maintained an A-listers-only policy, Plastic Beach’s guest list is truly dazzling. Along for the ride this time is Lou Reed (who features on Some Kind of Nature), Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, the Fall’s Mark E Smith (Glitter Freeze), Mick Jones of BAD and the Clash, De La Soul and Gruff Rhys (Superfast Jellyfish) – even the Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music. And you know that no record is complete without those guys.

The sounds of Plastic Beach are just as broad. One blogger has already written of Stylo, the album’s lead single: “It sounds like Kraftwerk is playing in a roller disco while a hip hop DJ is spinning vinyl in the background. It just feels good.” Jamie Hewlett, the co-creator of Gorillaz – the world’s most successful virtual band, incidentally, according to the Guinness Book of World Records – reports how the album’s myriad contributors have “all dropped a unique slice of themselves into the Gorillaz pot. For many a Gorillaz collaboration is like a ticket to Disneyland.” (He dreams of a day when he and his ‘DNA re-animation machine’ can resurrect such past masters as Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding — now that would be some collaboration.)

As for the lengthy evolution of their new set, Hewlett recalls with no small amount of joy the “happy days” when it began to first take shape. “No expectations, just seeing what glory dribbled out of the fret-board. Then some of it started making sense, unfortunately. Over the weeks, the months, the melodies came into focus and the songs demanded to be … finessed and defined. Like errant children, wild and untamed, full of potential but with nappies full of excrement.”

If there’s one defining moment in the history of Gorillaz pre Plastic Beach, then it took place over a few wild nights in late 2005. The series of shows, staged at the Manchester Opera House, was about as close to a real live performance as the enigmatic crew – the demon spawn of Blur’s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl creator Hewlett – has ever come. Hewlett was sufficiently impressed to describe both the Harlem and Manchester dates as a “phantasmagoria of sounds, colours and assaults on the senses. Even without my usual self-administered trinkets and tinctures I would have found that experience quite, er, psychedelic. We brought the houses down.”

As seen on the DVD release, Demon Days Live, Gorillaz was far more than some geeky indulgence; they were crafting some of the finest pop music this side of the 21st century – and so what if they existed only in holographic and computer-generated form?

Gorillaz have the numbers to back it all up, too. Their self-titled debut, which dropped in 2001, shifted more than seven million copies worldwide; 2005’s Demon Days several million again (they’ve sold upwards of 350,000 albums in Australia alone). They’ve won a Grammy, VMAs and an Ivor Novello award. They were voted MySpace’s most popular band of 2008, without releasing any new music. Their genre-jumping music has featured on games (FIFA Football 2002, the PS2 title Singstar) and TV shows, while the band has been transformed into action figures. There’s even whispers of a Gorillaz movie.

“Over the weeks … the melodies came into focus and the songs demanded to be finessed and defined. Like errant children, wild and untamed, full of potential but with nappies full of excrement.”

All up, it isn’t bad for an outfit that Hewlett and Albarn created when they were flat-sharing in London and binging on MTV, while sprawled on the couch. As Hewlett said soon after, “If you watch MTV for too long, it’s a bit like hell – there’s nothing of substance there. So we got the idea for a cartoon band, something that would be a comment on that.” Over the ensuing decade, of course, Gorillaz has taken on a life of its own, becoming a key project not just for Hewlett and Albarn but even for the even the virtual members of the band. It’s all become a case of art imitating life, surely?

When he slips into character as bassist Murdoc, you get the sense that Hewlett can’t be bothered working out where the fantasy ends and real life intervenes. So when asked what consumed his days between those Apollo shows and Plastic Beach, Murdoc gave this report: “I just wanted to have a lost weekend — and somehow I managed to string it out for about three years. It’s amazing what kind of fun you can have with a credit card and a big bottle of Absinthe.”

And his bandmates? Guitarist Noodle, apparently, hadn’t been seen since she was attacked by gun-mounted helicopters back in the El Manana video. (It was necessary to clone her for the new record.) Drummer Russel experienced, in Murdoc’s words, “His big, bad breakdown, seeing demons shooting out of the speakers” while trying to make a hip hop answer to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. “His mind just turned to jelly.” And 2D? “Well, I don’t know or care what he got up to,” says Murdoc. “I remember operating on him at Kong Studios” – Gorillaz virtual HQ until it was mysteriously torched in 2008 – “and I chloroformed him and stole all his organs. I think it made him quite ill. Still, he’s a great singer. That’s why I got him back in on the new record.”

Eventually, his bandmates, or reproductions thereof, tracked him down. Their mission? “To Gorilla-rize up the snazzy new tunes and construct this towering mournful behemoth that sits in your CD slot today,” reports Murdoc.

The end result of this bizarre alchemy, Plastic Beach is both social commentary and stylistic overload, a record deep in pop, rap, dub, soul and electronica, perhaps even more diverse and far-reaching that its platinum-plated predecessors. The title track reunites the Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon for the first time since that era-defining band went under, no small achievement in itself. Stylo, which Murdoc sneak-previewed on UK radio in early 2009, pretty much sums up the album’s sonic ADD.

Plastic Beach is also the name of Murdoc’s new “state of my arse” recording pleasure dome, which he says arose from “the ashes of Kong Studios like a big dirty swan.” Inspired by the island hideaway of the Thunderbirds team, Murdoc craved a site so remote that “not even Google could find me”. He ended up lost in the South Pacific, where building a “recording studio in a stinking mass of floating plastic in the middle of nowhere” was one of his more “extravagant wastes of time”. And, frankly, neither Murdoc Niccals, Jamie Hewlett, Damon Albarn or the rest of the Gorillaz crew would have it any other way.

“See, when Gorillaz is up and running, everything’s sweet and dandy,” Murdoc explains, before making his exit. “I’m bulletproof. It just gives me everything I need. I can pay off the debtors, make swanky videos, and swan around the globe like I own the place, all the while playing my dirty thick black bass over some fantastic music. Mmmmmm…”

PLASTIC BEACH is out now through EMI. www.gorillaz.com

Gorillaz Radio

The Gorillaz’ debut was produced by Dan The Automator, responsible for Del Tha Funkee Homosapien’s Deltron 3030 the year before. That album’s sci-fi hip hop combo was a major touchstone for the self-titled album, which also blended one-and-a-half minute punk and druggy trip hop. It worked, selling over seven million copies worldwide.

Demon Days (2005)

New producer Danger Mouse, of the Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up The Grey Album, might have created something even cartoonier for the second album. Instead, it’s dark and strange. The Gorillaz sound like the survivors of an apocalypse, stranded with equally gloomy survivors. Even De La Soul sound jaded, but gloom has rarely been this much fun.

Plastic Beach (2010)

Jamie Hewlett said he’d grown sick of drawing the band members, so Plastic Beach changes them enough to get Hewlett’s ink flowing again. Five years on, they’ve aged, vanished or been replaced by androids. Washed up on an island made of garbage, they record their third album. But do they sound aged and washed-up?

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