Electric Shock

Electric Shock (Part 1)
Electric Shock (Part 2)
Electric Shock (Africa Express live, 2008)

"Gorillaz had peaked. They threatened not to make another album after "Demon Days" , and anyhow they're such an expensive act to run, if we kill 'em off now, we've sealed their place in rock history forever. They've sold millions upon millions of records, won every award: there's nowhere left to go, right? Let's make 'em go out on a high, that way like all great icons before them... Gorillaz place would become frozen, captured for all time in the untouchable landscape of pop history."
- Cass Browne

Damon and Jamie were done with the characters, Jamie was "so fucking bored" of drawing them and Damon felt artistically they couldn't top the "Demon Days" album. They were supposed to make a movie to end the Gorillaz story, but due to more studio tampering (this time by The Weinstein Company), yet again, the Gorillaz movie got cancelled. So Jamie ended the story by making it seem like Noodle was trapped in Kong Studios' gateway to hell, and not dead after the "El Mañana" video (the movie probably would have revived her). However, Damon and Jamie wanted to continue doing projects together...

"I think the idea... is that it's like how The Who presented their (rock operas)- "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia" and so on. Those were presented by "The Who" even though none of their members were actually in the movies... it's the same people working on it, that's the principle."
- Jamie Hewlett

In 2007, the duo debuted their Chinese opera project "Monkey: Journey To The West", an Asian folk legend that would be fused with Jamie's crude artistry and Damon's electronic-rock score. It was a brilliant piece of work that I was lucky to be able to see when it came to New York in 2012. However, Damon revealed that they originally planned to release the project under the "Gorillaz" moniker. The idea would be carried on that the cartoons would stop presenting themselves and just become the people behind the projects, as much as Damon and Jamie were behind them, further blurring the line between them and the reality around us. That same year, the duo started work on a concept record called "Carousel" which would be an orchestral art rock record about "the mystical aspects of Britain". It would feature numerous guests on it and would also explore elements of electronic, brass band joints and Arabic music. However when the duo went to a show by a Gorillaz tribute group fronted by voice of drummer Russel and longtime musical partner, Remi Kabaka, called Gorillaz Soundsystem. Damon and Jamie began to realize how much people missed their characters and decided to hastily re-work the record into a Gorillaz project. What happened next would be the start of the band's fall from grace...

"(There doesn't need to be a film) cause it's gonna be in everybody's heads"
- Jamie Hewlett

The record would now be called "Plastic Beach" and would focus more on environmental themes as well as a new storyline for the characters. Bassist Murdoc Niccals, on the run from the Boogeyman who has come to collect his soul, moves to a gigantic floating piece of plastic in the middle of nowhere and call it his home. He would kidnap singer 2D as well as other guest singers to appear on the record and make a cyborg replicant of guitarist Noodle (thinking she was still trapped in hell) using her DNA. It would finally put the Gorillaz film idea to rest, making a span of concept records to tell the essential Gorillaz story, this one being the first. It would have a major world tour, an updated video game, a book series, a follow-up record that would be about what happened to drummer Russel and Noodle. It could have been the band's artistic triumph to one up "Demon Days". However the record became a compromised project that would end with both Damon and Jamie going their separate ways for several years. Jamie's visual department would spend their entire budget before most (if any) of the above things could go into effect leaving us only with a series of music videos and many things that ended up going nowhere. Furthermore, the record company, EMI, rushed the band to release the project as the music industry was experiencing it's first slump that still affects the business to this day. This caused Damon to strip a lot of the orchestration and organic instrumentation off certain songs so that the album would be able to flow as one with the poppier electronic pieces that appear on the record. When he asked if he could make the album a "double record" with the second disc being some of the songs the band cut with various orchestras, the record company denied him. Thus the finished project we got in 2010 is a shadow of what it could have been, with certain orchestral sections of songs being shortened or removed completely, and some songs being unfinished versions that are forced to be faded out or be lacking in any other instrumentation other than synthesizers and drum machines. The album didn't sell well and divided the fanbase upon it's release (although it reign in a new generation of fans later on after it's release). Whether or not you like it is another discussion, the matter of facts is that "Plastic Beach" was a rushed failure which turned out to be something neither Damon or Jamie hoped it would be.

""Electric Shock" is dope"
- Mos Def

Now that's enough of a lead in, let's get down to business. Do I think "Plastic Beach" is a bad record? No, in fact, I think it's a great record that stands the test of time. I just see that this record (along with the phase) was not as great as it could have been, therefore it's not a "perfect" record in the same way the first two records were (and still are).

 To start off the analysis of this phase, we will be looking at the unreleased track, "Electric Shock". "Electric Shock" was premiered on BBC radio along with two unfinished demos two months before the album's release by Murdoc and the track would go on to be a huge presence in the band's works despite it not making on to the album.

 The first version released of the song begins with an orchestral lead-in by in-house orchestra for the album, sinfonia ViVA. It reminds me a lot of the instrumentals from musical "West Side Story", and given how this album was originally supposed to be an orchestral concept record, I bet Damon took a lot of inspiraton from his old "original cast recording" musical vinyls he had in his collection. The intro would eventually be released under the name "Three Hearts, Seven Seas, Twelve Moons", an orchestral piece that would make it as a bonus track on the digital version of the "Plastic Beach" record.

The song would eventually transition into an organ giving us huge carnival type sounds and melodies, suggesting old pier and fairground imagery, which is what Damon was originally going for on Britain. Soon after the song goes into a schizophrenic drum machine pattern as Haruka Karouda, voice of Noodle, starts chanting "THAT'S ELECTRIC SHOCK!" This chant would eventually be used as a sort of chorus on the "Plastic Beach" single, "Rhinestone Eyes". The song then suddenly ends after building up into a chaotic and random sorta synth haze.

The second part of the song would eventually be released in 2014 mix Damon made for FACT magazine. This section starts with a wind haze which transitions into a chiller drum machine loop as a synth riff takes the main melody of the song. Soon, the album's in-house brass band, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, start to double the synth riff as vocoded voices (the vocoder will be a recurring instrument in this phase) chant "electric shock" in the background. If the synth riff sounds familiar, it's because it was eventually re-worked into a later song from Phase 4, "Strobelite". The song soon dissolves into another wind type haze and ends before a second minute can hit the track. I think the two parts were meant to be put together on the final record but probably never came to be due to the pressure put on Damon to release the record.

Now this is all well and good, but what does the track mean? Well given the visuals Jamie paired the song's intro with and the intro's new title, I think this song would have been an exploration of the Boogeyman character whose voice actor, rapper Mos Def, was slated to appear on this track along with rap trio and Gorillaz veterans De La Soul. The Boogeyman would show up multiple times on the record each time conveying his evil intentions, he's the villain of the phase and his lack of further development was another casualty lost in this phase.

Given the fact that Damon incorporated many elements of this track into later songs and the fact that he performed this track live with Africa Express in 2008, the same year that he probably recorded it, Damon probably had a fondness for this track. Had it not been for the interferences the record label forced upon the artistic duo, this track (along with a handful of others) probably would have made it on to the record. Instead, it will be an unfinished piece that will most likely never see the light of day in it's full glory with it's verses by Mos Def's Boogeyman and De La Soul. "Electric Shock" is a track whose presence can't be ignored in the Gorillaz canon and will most likely have other elements from it incorporated into other tracks in the future.