Gorillaz: The Fall [PARLOPHONE]

Why you'll love it

This Parlophone repress comes with a printed inner sleeve. Damon Albarn made the whole album on the road in 32 days, a tour diary with guests Bobby Womack and the Clash's Mick Jones and Paul Simonon.

This edition

• Printed inner sleeve
• Parlophone repress

About the album

Most musicians on tour write postcards. Damon Albarn wrote an album. During the North American leg of the Escape to Plastic Beach tour in the fall of 2010, he recorded a song a day on his iPad, in hotel rooms and on the bus, then had it mixed in England by Stephen Sedgwick without adding a single overdub. He called it a kind of diary of his experience in America.

The track titles read like an itinerary: "Phoner to Arizona," "Hillbilly Man," "Detroit," "Shy-Town," "The Snake in Dallas," "Amarillo." It's mellow, drifting and downtempo, built from apps, a ukulele, an Omnichord, a melodica and a Korg Monotron. Bobby Womack sings on "Bobby in Phoenix," and Mick Jones and Paul Simonon of the Clash turn up too. Most songs were written and recorded in a single day, starting in Montreal and working west. Sedgwick also co-produced.

It went out first as a Christmas Day gift to the Gorillaz fan club, and some critics dubbed it the world's first iPad album. Most of us, on tour, struggle to send a decent text.

Also at Kops: more Gorillaz on vinyl · browse Pop

Tracklist

Listen

On Parlophone / Warner Records, a reissue of the 2010 album.