Damon Albarn hints at ninth Gorillaz album to come out this year
Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn hinted at a new album to be released sometime in 2025, a follow-up to their 2023 album ‘Cracker Island’.
Damon Albarn says a new Gorillaz album is coming in 2025.
The alternative hip-hop virtual band — known for songs ‘Feel Good Inc’ and ‘Rhinestone Eyes’ — hinted Gorillaz may drop its ninth studio album in 2025, Albarn teased.
In an interview with French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, the 55-year-old Blur frontman said: “I’m finishing a new Gorillaz album. One opera and one new Gorillaz album seems like enough for 2025. Unless someone accuses me of taking my foot off the gas.”
The unnamed new album would serve as a follow-up to Gorillaz’s 2023 album, ‘Cracker Island’.
The opera Albarn referenced is ‘The Magic Flute II: La Malédiction’, an electro-opera he wrote that premiered March 27 in Paris, France.
It is based on ‘The Magic Flute Part II’ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1807, which was inspired by composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Albarn told the ‘Broken Record’ podcast: “You’ve heard of Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’? Well, Goethe, who is a contemporary of Mozart, wrote ‘Part II’ of that – the sequel – but it never got put to music. It’s this legendary lost thing.”
The virtual band — Damon Albarn, Jamie Hewlett, and their four fictional animated members, 2D, Murdoc, Russel, and Noodle — was created in 1998. They released their first album, ‘Gorillaz’, in 2001 and followed it with ‘Demon Days’ in 2005, which became their best-selling album.
Gorillaz began a hiatus in 2012, allegedly due to a fallout between Albarn and Hewlett, but reunited in 2017 and went on to release more albums.
The band performed at Coachella in 2024, but have no touring plans for this year.
