Monkey - Journey To the West

by Eddie Robson

Monkey: magic

"There’s a sense of fun throughout that keeps the album well above ‘worthy’ territory."

‘I think Damon’s probably got three balls,’ was Alex James’ assessment of his Blur bandmate’s remarkable workrate – and that was back in 1999, when Blur were still taking up most of his energies along with the odd film soundtrack. Albarn is now 40 and has been doing this for almost half his life. Most people with his back catalogue and level of success take a bit of time for laurel-resting. Albarn keeps plugging away in the (not unjustified) conviction that his best work is still ahead of him.

In some ways the split/hiatus of Blur has been an advantage, as he doesn’t have the touring commitments that come with being in a long-established and highly-popular band. Still, his desire to keep challenging himself is wholly admirable, as is the talent that allows him to do all the new things he keeps trying his hand at. He started this decade by forming a hip-hop collective (considering he was a middle-class white man in his 30s, let’s just take a second to marvel at how he pulled that off without looking stupid) and as it nears its end, here he is with an album of the music he wrote for a Chinese opera (not the Cantonese lyrics, which are by Chen Shi-Zheng) in between work on Gorillaz’s ‘Demon Days’ and ‘The Good, The Bad & The Queen’.

Whilst the eponymous hero of the story makes his journey to the west, Albarn has made a corresponding journey to the east. Many musicians have dabbled in what is ludicrously dubbed ‘world music’ (because all the music most of us normally listen to is made in space, right? Albarn himself hates the term and rightly so). Most have either produced a naff plastic version of the source material or been crushed by the weight of their own worthiness. Albarn, however, has done a good job of fusing two traditions of music, perhaps because he looked into the basis of Chinese composition (pentatonic scale, yadda yadda) and built the music that way from the ground up rather than adding superficial cod-Chinese touches afterwards (like Bowie did on ‘China Girl’, for instance).

Although often portrayed as arrogant and autocratic, Albarn is sharp enough to recognise that he works best in collaboration with others and on ‘Journey to the West’ he has an army of collaborators at his disposal – and his own voice is never heard. He doesn’t attempt to constantly replicate the scale of the opera, often opting for synths instead of strings. It works well as an album in its own right, although many of the tracks being short pieces without strong hooks which, in patches, causes a degree of drift (the discordant ‘Battle in Heaven’ becomes a bit cacophonous). However, there are lots of great melodies in here – ‘Heavenly Peach Banquet’ is an incredible piece of music – whilst there are moments when you can recognise the Albarn we know from Blur, like the waltzing ‘I Love Buddha’ which could almost be one of their experimental mid-90s B-sides.

Most importantly, there’s a sense of fun throughout that keeps the album well above ‘worthy’ territory. Which makes you wonder why Albarn always seems so grumpy these days when he’s being interviewed. Cheer up, fella.
Dan said on September 5th 2008 [report abuse]

must hear this album, as you say, Albarn is something of a legend and it's so refreshing to hear sounds that aren't the same old western pop structures that are continually rehashed.

Mendelsohn said on September 5th 2008 [report abuse]

Damon Albarn's first good work. Fact. I'm a bit miffed the BBC olympics tune didn't quite make it onto this otherwise extremely rad album.

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