Monkey Duo Talks ‘Journey To The West’ Opera

Damon Albarn is a musician who loves the alter-ego. The multi-facted Londoner started as the vocalist/keyboarder for seminal ’90s brit-pop band Blur, before breathing life into four animated pop stars called the Gorillaz in 2001. His partner Jamie Hewlett (co-creator of the comic book Tank Girl) designed the foursome of 2D, Noodle, Russel Hobbs, and Murdoc Niccals, who became the face of two multi-platinum albums (Gorillaz, Demon Days).

His most recent project goes under a new name: Monkey. With Hewlett once again handling the visuals, Monkey recently released Journey to the West as an album, which is also currently being performed as an opera in the UK. Yes, the kind where the fat lady sings. Damon and Jamie greeted press at the Spotted Pig in New York last week to give more insight to the production of the soundtrack, the struggle of animation, and advertising at the Beijing Olympics. Read the interview below…

Interview by Richard “DJ Treats” Dryden

ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE GORILLAZ ON MONKEY:

Jamie Hewlett: We remember Monkey from when we were growing up'it was a TV series in England, in the late '70s early '80s.

Damon Albarn: It was a really wacky Japanese TV show. It was the biggest show in England for a while, for my generation'the sort of 38 to 42, people in that age now. Everybody knows it.

Jamie Hewlett: Some very clever person at the BBC bought out the series to show on English television back when we had 3 channels!

Damon Albarn: The most interesting thing about Monkey is that it's extremely old. You've read the whole 16th century book? It goes back a lot further than that. There's this cave painting in China, which sort of suggests the story. So China has had sort of superheroes who fly around and blow up things and save people for thousands of years.

Jamie Hewlett: They had the original superhero…..monkey.

ON MONKEY’S OPERA PERFORMANCE:

Damon Albarn: At the moment it's gonna be in a really big tent in London up until Christmas and after that its gonna come here [America], probably.

Jamie Hewlett: We want it to go everywhere eventually but so far it's been played in opera houses for a limited time and we wanted to create a space where it could be set up for longer and more people can get a chance to see it'people who may be a bit uncomfortable going to opera houses.

Damon Albarn: We've got 150,000 tickets to sell come Christmas. So we've taken it to a far more ambitious level. Up until this point the music in the show had to be slightly different to how I'd originally envisioned it, because of the nature of opera houses and the acoustics.

Hit “NEXT” to find out more about Damon Albarn’s songwriting process, and Jamie Hewlett’s set design…”