Bananaz (DVD)
EMI/PARLOPHONE
BY Chris Bilton
June 30, 2009 21:06
When Blur’s Damon Albarn and Tank Girl creator Jamie Hewlett cooked up the animated supergroup Gorillaz, they took full advantage of the opportunity to exploit the cartoon quality of the band’s celebrity — generally taking the piss out of the media and the music industry in interviews and awards-show appearances while selling around 12 million albums. They also allowed Ceri Levy relatively unlimited access to the reality behind the project, from its inception in 1998 right through to the massive success of Demon Days. Levy’s resulting documentary, Bananaz, is a fascinating look at Albarn’s creativity — whether he’s gleefully torturing a guitar or coaxing a vocal melody out of Ibrahim Ferrer — and a thorough exploration of just what kind of large-scale pop culture conquest Gorillaz continue to carry out.
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