Gorillaz – The Mountain

Across two neighbouring tracks on The Mountain, titled The Hardest Thing and Orange County, Damon Albarn repeats the refrain: “You know the hardest thing / Is to say goodbye to someone you love.” The Gorillaz’s ninth studio album is an exploration of feeling loss amidst the richness of that which remains present and opens with its title track, built around a Rajasthani melody on strings. Experienced alongside Jamie Hewlett’s album artwork of the group’s core members, atop a mountain, looking out into the sublime, the track invites us to take a moment out of our day to remember our oneness with all creation.

This is not a push towards escapism, however – the record is not afraid to dwell in darkness, and tracks such as The Empty Dream Machine succeed in expressing deep sadness without a hint of despondency. Grounded in the uncertainty of right now, we carry the memory of the view from that mountain-top in The Happy Dictator, a collaboration with US-based duo Sparks that plays with the language of rhetoric and illusion over a disquietingly upbeat set of chords – until the empty words return to us, reassuringly, as simply a combination of sounds that can be made into music, just like everything else.

Albarn has also revived his role as a discerning curator, and the album features brilliant talent from across the globe. The Moon Cave offers funk-inspired synths beneath folk-style verses provided by a range of guest vocalists – Jalen Ngonda, Black Thought (of The Roots fame), the renowned Asha Puthli – whose voices sound like they simply belong together. The Manifesto’s mingling of triumphant, fearless declarations from Trueno and the late great Proof (D12) with the classical tones of Ajay Prasanna’s flute is another journey through time and space that appears inevitable once it reaches the listener. Elsewhere, we hear the heavy stylistic lead taken from Syrian legend Omar Souleyman on Damascus and from the magnificent Asha Bhosle on The Shadowy Light.

“The challenge we set ourselves was to make an album about death that made people feel less afraid of death”, Albarn has explained. A glance at the artist’s expansive catalogue is enough to remind us that he has never been shy of taking on a challenge. And producing The Mountain, a record which offers a warm welcome to our fear of the unknown, may be the Gorillaz’s most remarkable achievement to date.