Description

1LP Vinyl – 0190295209414

On Song Machine: Season One — Strange Timez, the number of guests could violate a nightclub fire code. The release brings together tracks from the first season of Song Machine, an ongoing web series of Gorillaz songs and videos released throughout the year. Robert Smith of the Cure is at his bedhead best on the dream-disco title track; Beck sashays through the shiny California ennui of “The Valley of the Pagans”; St. Vincent’s Annie Clark sings along over New Wave synths and electro-beat baubles on “Chalk Tablet Towers”; and L.A. rapper Schoolboy Q freestyles over the robot-pop of “Pac-Man.”  The big get is Elton John, who appears on the lovely “The Pink Phantom,” evoking his rocket-man mortality in lyrics about a sky made of diamonds and a world that’s fallen silent, alongside a sumptuous vocal from Atlanta rapper-singer 6lack. And that’s just the first six songs. The vertiginous feeling of pleasurable overkill fits Albarn’s own sense of warm, spaced-out malaise on several songs: “My head is spinning, suspended in a twilight web that keeps on giving,” he sings on “Strange Timez.”