Fiction drawn with basslines
Before you even see it, the bassline slinks in sluggish, sticky and low-slung, entwining itself around your spine. Everything seems a little skewed, like waking up in someone else’s dream, as a loop begins clicking like the teeth of an old cassette player. Detached and narcotic, Damon Albarn’s voice floats through the mist singing something that sounds bored and hypnotic. Made to haunt, the groove is fixed down tightly, designed for repeat.
Gorillaz originated in the crossroads where disillusionment and animation converge rather than in a club or garage. Albarn and Hewlett saw a band with only shadows and noise, no faces, no egos. Landing in 2005, “Feel Good Inc. ” reflected the mood of the time: glossy screens, slow-motion anxiety, and steady digital background noise. It sounded like a broadcast from a crumbling tower, consistent and strange, half toward myth.
Then comes the interruption: De La Soul slamming onto the track as though someone slammed the door down at a peaceful afterparty. Their laughter pierces the haze, overflowing with urgent, frenetic delight. It seems imperative rather than smooth cooperation. They crash through the beat, not rhyme over it. For several seconds, the track loses its cool and spirals out of its own head. It comes to life by means of chaos.
In Feel Good Inc., Gorillaz deliver an absorbing marriage of alternative rock and hip-hop, featuring verses from none other than influential rap trio De La Soul, in one of those songs that just works, and effortlessly too.
(Benedict, The Indiependent, 2015)
The video burned itself into retinas over a generation, spinning turbines, improbable cities, flashing and vanishing faces. It was an animated caution not a music video. MTV replayed it but it felt like it belonged to the underground. Children who had never heard of Blur or De La Soul still knew the tower, that beat, that laugh. Buried in playlists and memory, it became part of the decade’s design.
It maintains form still. The sound lingers like the flavor of something weird and sweet; it doesn’t date. The silent between the notes counts just as much as the rhythm itself. “Feel Good Inc. ” was not created to ride a wave. It was created to float in the current, to find depth where music can be memorable without need of a face.
