Sound Check (Gravity)

Sound Check (Gravity)

Sound Check (Gorillaz Live Tour 2001)

Sound Check (Demon Detour)

"It's over, you don't need to tell me."

- Damon Albarn, "No Distance Left To Run"

"Sound Check (Gravity)" is the most complex song on the band's debut record, both instrumentally and lyrically. It starts with the sound of Damon Albarn singing and playing his acoustic guitar outside on a dark and mellow night in Jamaica. The low quality of the recording gives you the feeling that you are right there with him, you can hear the crickets chirping in the distance (and even a bit of Damon breathing and sniffling before he sings). He then starts to sing, "Gravity, on me, never let me down gently. Gravity, with me, never let me go, no, no, gravity." As he says the last few words an eery reverb soaked piano comes in cueing in a whole new direction for the song.

Now the song is a dark trip hop track featuring a Dan The Automator breakbeat combined with interjections from Jason Cox's live drums to give you an uneasy feeling. Damon plays countermelodies on various synthesizers in the background and Junior Dan plays a phenomenal bass line which goes perfectly with the song's cryptic yet reflective beat. However in this section, the main focus is on Kid Koala who scratches up a vocal line which says: "I don't know, love is breaking."

The song then changes again, now the song is quieter with more room for Junior Dan's bass guitar and Damon's various keyboards to take the center stage. Over this Damon repeats: "I don't pull me down, I don't pull me down on me. I don't pull me down, I don't pull me down on you." After this the song gets loud again like it was before, being cued by the same piano that cued the first direction change.

The song stops, and then we are back with Damon, alone in the Jamaican nighttime setting. This time however, he's accompanied by more of his own "string" synths to provide countermelodies. Quickly after we get back to the song's original landscape, it changes again. Now both of Damon's vocal lines sing at the same time over the quiet trip hop beat that took place before. The two vocal lines give a call and response to each other, which conveys the feeling of two people talking to each other. Maybe these people were lovers realizing their relationship is at an endpoint. One doesn't want to let go, the other just wants to take them-self away from the blame. Could the lyrics be a commentary on a past relationship Damon had? He does sound very torn up in the beginning, we can even hear him sniffling before he begins to sing. This song (along with another Gorillaz song "5/4") has the strong possibility of being about the traumatic end of his relationship with Britpop star Justine Frischmann. Damon representing the heartbroken "gravity" character, and Justine representing the character who "don't pull me down." After the pair end their last conversation, Damon wails "gravity" in anguish over the loud and angry trip hop beat we heard before. Soon, Kid Koala delivers his last scratches, and the band suddenly stops. Their time together has reached it's end, it's time to move on.

"Sound Check" became a staple of the Gorillaz first couple of tours. It's "loud quiet loud" dynamics worked very well as an "alternative rock" song. So, live the song became more of a rock piece, shedding its previous roots as weird Dan The Automator/Kid Koala trip hop. I doubt Gorillaz will ever play this song live again due to its frequent use of falsetto vocals, but it would be a shame if this one didn't get played at least one last time. "Sound Check (Gravity)" is one of the most beautiful songs Gorillaz ever recorded, perfectly capturing the feeling of the end of a relationship in a way only  Gorillaz could.