Friday, April 16, 2010

Gorillaz - Stylo (review)


Gorillaz' third album Plastic Beach, which ostensibly centers on a remote island built completely of post-consumer detritus, promises to be as loosely conceptual and vaguely political as Gorillaz and Demon Days. Leaked first single "Stylo" does more than its part in keeping with Albarn's "DJ/rupture with a million-dollar budget" approach: high-level guests and a global patchwork for a backing track. There's not a Gorillaz song that can trace its lineage to one geographic place, and "Stylo" feels drawn from the time when people thought hip-hop might turn the Bronx into a borderless musical melting pot. The buzzy, bass-heavy electro bed recalls Afrika Bambaataa's Kraftwerk fixation, and the alternately droning and whooshing synths work well with a lyrical fixation on capturing electricity-- makes me think of a DJ tapping into a lamp post to power his speakers.

Albarn's vocal contributions are typically laconic and textural, and Mos Def's fuzzy transmission of a few bars at the track's end-- he appears to literally phone in his part-- makes him feel more like a guest on Space Ghost. Not to worry, though: Bobby Womack's outsize, ragged freestyle invests "Stylo" with an unhinged-sounding take on the bleak passion of his own hardscrabble autobiography, culminating in a scream at the end of his second verse that suggests he's privy to something more frightening. It's the point where "Stylo"-- nothing if not streamlined, otherwise---goes off the rails for a brief second, before righting itself again.

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