Two years after they returned to the scene with The Now Now, an album without any featuring artists, Gorillaz are going back to what they love doing best: collaborations. The singles were released sporadically throughout 2020 with a high-flying lineup. Damon Albarn released one song per month, with the whole thing making up Season 1 of Song Machine. The album opens with the brilliant and highly relevant track Strange Times featuring Robert Smith. Damon says that he worked with the singer from The Cure entirely over email. “What I gave Robert was something very vague. He completely and utterly made it what it is” he said. It’s a masterpiece that’s perfectly fitting for the pandemic. In the long guestlist we find Beck on The Valleys of the Pagans, Leee John on the soulful The Lost Chord and the sweet high notes of Imagination, Peter Hook and the young singer Georgia on the post-punk song Aries, Fatoumata Diawara on the hypnotic Désolée (where Albarn even sings in French) and the raunchy punk rap of Momentary Bliss with slowthaï. The more you listen to it the more you can appreciate its richness. That’s what makes the album so good: it brings together incongruent artists who take the songs in a whole range of different directions. You never knowing where you’re going next. The Gorillaz lead you through a whole array of styles, adding a common varnish to each layer. The Deluxe edition includes six new tracks including MLS with JPEGMafia and the excellent Opium by the Southern duo EarthGang who are signed to J Cole’s label Dreamville. This is an eclectic, profound and very large scale project that’s stamped with Albarn’s impeccable production. And we’ve even got Season 2 and a Netflix documentary to look forward to! © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz