Anyone wHO was convinced that this was the year of the rat must, by now, be realising that, in fact, the animate being that's making 2008 its own is the monkey. In 2007, Damon Albarn and graphical artist brother, Jamie Hewlett - the men in arrears Gorillaz - premiered their latest outside-the-box project: Monkey: Journey To The West, and it's been wowing the critics ever since. Combining Hewlett's distinctive comic book style, circus acrobatics and Mandarin Operatics, it's amazingly reaching knocked out to common people for whom even Gilbert and Sullivan is a stretch. But how does the soundtrack fare without the stupefying visuals?
Everyone who has seen the two-minute animated ident for the BBC's Olympic coverage will cause a pretty good theme what to expect: Bubbly analogue synth arpeggios, seraphic Chinese vocals and a whole embarrassment of Eastern instrumentation combined with Western dance tropes. Pretty much like Albarn's other late project, The Good The Bad And The Queen, this intrepid mixture crataegus oxycantha look unbelievable on paper, but in the shape it makes for a delightfully offbeam delight. The mixture veers widely from Cantonese pop via totalitarian overkill (The Dragon King, March Of The Iron Army) to electronica (Monkey Bee) and dissonant musique concrete (Tripitaka's Curse). True enough, every once in a while Damon's older work pops up, as on the Gorillaz-like O Mi To Fu, but, surprisingly, some of the most successful stuff here is the straight forwards, brass-led classical work like The White Skeleton Demon or the closing Disappearing Volcano. It seems Albarn really is a proper musician.
Only on rare occasions do you get the feeling that the duo are cultural tourists. One suspects that Heavenly Peach Banquet was dredged from Albarn's boyhood TV habits watching The Water Margin (a keen fantasy kung fu serial whose base tune was equally sweetly naff). And Battle In Heaven's mesmerically repeated string loops that slowly lapse into bloodcurdling dissonance recreate the wobbly degradation of a worn out kung fu film soundtrack.
What is odd is considering just how widely bought this oddment will be. One suspects that just about 50 percent on extend will not prove to be on the majority's repeat playlists. But Monkey represents a really levelheaded and successful attempt to fuse East and West in new ways. And for that alone it is a triumph.
More info
