A cartoon band kept working while the real world locked down. Gorillaz, the virtual group created by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, faced a problem no tour bus could solve: their new project was built on constant motion, and suddenly nobody could move. On October 23, 2020, the band released Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez, their seventh studio album, on Parlophone and Warner Records, turning a year of chaos into one of the strangest records of their career.
The web series behind the album
The album grew out of Song Machine, a web series of singles and videos with guest artists released through 2020. The idea was simple: drop a new episode every few weeks, each one a fresh collaboration. A teaser appeared on social media on January 28, alongside a 23-second promo single called Song Machine Theme Tune, and the first full episode landed two days later. The machine was running.
Then the pandemic hit. In March 2020, the singles stopped as the world shut down, and on March 24 the group assured fans that Song Machine would continue despite what they called serious times. The third episode arrived on April 9, but the rhythm had changed. A surprise tribute single to the late drummer Tony Allen, who died on April 30, pushed the fourth episode to June 9. The project was no longer a sprint; it was a survival act.
A guest list across two continents
What kept it alive was the guest list. The album features Slowthai, Slaves, Fatoumata Diawara, Peter Hook, Georgia, Octavian, ScHoolboy Q, Robert Smith, Elton John, 6lack, Beck, Leee John, St. Vincent and Kano. Seven of the eleven tracks had already appeared as Song Machine episodes, so the album felt less like a collection of songs and more like a season finale. Critics praised the stylistic range and the star power, and the record reached number two in the UK and number twelve in the US.
The real twist came with the tour that never happened. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, no live shows supported the album. Instead, in December 2020, Gorillaz broadcast Song Machine Live From Kong, a set of studio performances streamed directly to fans. The band had spent years blurring the line between real and virtual; now the virtual side was the only stage they had.
Singles like Momentary Bliss, Désolé, and Aries had already shown the machine working at full speed before the shutdown. Robert Smith of The Cure joined for the title track Strange Timez, announced on September 7, 2020, and the sixth episode, the first recorded entirely during the pandemic, arrived two days later with the album's title and tracklist. The project kept mutating, but it never stopped.
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez is a record about distance that sounds remarkably close. The guests came from London, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Paris, Como and Texas, but the songs feel like one long conversation. The Guardian noted that the collaborators showed off Albarn's excellent musical taste and his skill at using their voices, while Consequence of Sound praised the album's smooth flow and constant shifts in style. The record runs just under three-quarters of an hour, but the machine behind it is still humming. The album's production team included James Ford, Prince Paul, Robert Smith, Mike Dean, Mike Will Made It, and P2J. It earned a score of 81 out of 100 on Metacritic and 7.6 out of 10 on AnyDecentMusic?.