![]() ![]() The Gorillaz project expresses a utopian imagination in the midst of the dystopian potential of the present. Any possible future, it seems, must be built in the face of precariousness and catastrophe. Throughout this arc, the Gorillaz project thematically illuminates the anxiety and despair of our age through lyrical motifs and the story of the fictional band’s escapades, maintaining this sense of anxiety and tension while reaching for utopian promise in the dystopian night. The pressing theme is about holding on to love and desire in the face of world wreckage. Phase three marks Gorillaz arrival on Plastic Beach, a riff on the gyres of garbage mounting in our oceans. Phase two coincides with the “war on terror,” and Gorillaz portentously ask if we are “the last living souls” as the struggle to hold onto hope proves difficult. The first phase of Gorillaz coincides with the turn of the millennium, what was to have been “the future.” But we find a landscape of environmental devastation, disease, famine, and expanding ghost towns. Gorillaz first phase faces the new millennium at the onset of a future already in decay, paying for the dead dreams of progress. I categorize the themes of each of the three phases of Gorillaz’s production as follows : Phase One : Millennial Tension, Phase Two : End Times, Phase Three : The Overload. ![]() The music and artwork of Gorillaz have raised questions surrounding “the future” since the group’s formation. ![]()
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