Good news for fans of the animated concept/actual band known as Gorillaz: The future is coming on. (It's coming on. It's coming on.)
More specifically: Frontman Damon Albarn says that this fall, he's going to begin recording music for a new Gorillaz album. The band hasn't released a full-length record since 2010.
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"I'm starting recording in September for a new Gorillaz record," Albarn told the Australian news show 7.30 on Thursday. "I've just been really, really busy so I haven't had a chance."
Currently, Albarn is preparing to take Australia with his other band, Blur, which also recently released its first new album in several years. (In that case, the wait was even longer: Blur's The Magic Whip dropped a full 12 years after the band's previous full-length release, Think Tank.)
Albarn also made headlines earlier this month when he refused to stop playing after five long hours at a Denmark festival -- and had to be carried off by security.
Gorillaz first burst onto the scene as a "virtual band" in 1998. Though its animated line-up -- featuring fictional characters 2D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs, who don't correspond to any real-life musicians -- hasn't changed, Albarn is the group's only continuous musical contributor. English comic book artist Jamie Hewlett is responsible for the animated band's look.
The band's future seemed in jeopardy in 2012, when Albarn told The Guardian that future Gorillaz albums were "unlikely" because he and Hewlett had had a falling out. Evidently, they've patched things up in the years since.