The collector’s issue, on sale on Tuesday 11 April, comes ahead of the new Gorillaz album, Humanz and includes Damon Albarn’s first interview in two years.
Commenting on the album, Albarn reveals: “The three tenents for this record were pain, joy, urgency. I told everyone to imagine you’re in America after the inauguration and it’s the worst case scenario: how would you feel that night? Let’s make a party record about the world going f**king nuts.”
“It’s amazing what you can do when your band members aren’t real people,” says Hewlett. “These characters are a conduit for everything we want to say but if we got up and said it, it wouldn’t have the same impact. Humanz is not a political statement about Trump – it’s a world in which he could get elected. Where are we as a race? Why haven’t we grown out of this? Putting a ‘z’ on the end is not a hip-hop statement, it’s more like an android Z. Are we human beings or just humanz?”
Albarn also talks about his reconciliation with Hewlett.
Albarn and Hewlett drifted apart after the latter dropped out of the pair’s operatic project Dr Dee and moved to Paris to be with his now wife, French actress, Emma du Caunes.
Speaking exclusively to Q magazine, Albarn explained what happened: “He basically left and I felt upset by that. There was a fallow period in our relationship.” He went on, “I’ve had the same experience with Graham (Coxon) over the years. I get the sense that sometimes people like getting off my steamroller and doing their own thing for a while and then joining me further down the road.”
Hewlett added: “I needed to change my life. I was going a little bit insane at that point. And, yeah we had a little bit of a disagreement. We’d lived in each other’s pockets for 10 years. Damon’s an artist, he’s one of the few real artists that I know, but that means you can be a little crazy and a little difficult and I can be the same. We locked horns a few times and I needed to escape. I met my wife, I went to Paris and I fixed myself. I sorted out my head.”
It was while drunk in East London after a Blur concert that Albarn asked if Hewlett wanted to revive Gorillaz. Hewlett said yes.
Speaking about the creative process, Hewlett told Q: “I completely trust him with the music and he trusts me with my side. I’m informed by the music. I can listen to an early demo and I can see everything. It’s like a button’s pushed in my head. We never sit around the table and have long debates. It’s understood that we shouldn’t talk about it, we just have to do it.”Albarn agrees: “All I know is that when we’re properly on the same wavelength there’s a real alchemy,” he says.
