Damon Albarn

Image of Damon Albarn
A lot of Gorillaz songs were very personal. I mean, that's why it was interesting, because it wasn't music being made for a cartoon. It was something different. It was a much more emotional affair. I wasn't necessarily thinking in the third-person then.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Song
Image of Damon Albarn
The whole Gorillaz concept is one for mavericks; it's a way for people who never have a chance to work together being able to ally behind the cartoons.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: People
Image of Damon Albarn
I like to put my iPad on the window and leave it there for however long the journey is, so that I'm staring out, and it's staring out. We're kind of staring out together. It's very poetic to me, watching that absent-minded passing of time. You realize how much you've taken in. What is left of that memory of you staring out of the window for an hour? It's all on the iPad.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Memories
Image of Damon Albarn
I was approached by Oxfam to go to Mali as their ambassador and get involved in their various initiatives out there. But I felt that was missing the point of using me, a musician
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Missing You
Image of Damon Albarn
Danger Mouse is now working on a bunch of other records, translating his ideas about remixing into all sorts of other projects.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Ideas
Image of Damon Albarn
The best way to get to know Africa is to go there and see what it is. To know somewhere that crazy and that magnificent, you have to spend some time among people, the rhythm of their lives.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Crazy
Image of Damon Albarn
I used to go to work and take heroin in the studio and then stop when I came home.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Home
Image of Damon Albarn
Well, as resources inevitably disappear [in Africa], people have to make do with a lot less. You have to be much more ingenious with a lot less, and accept that you can't get your perfect tuna sandwich on a street corner.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Perfect
Image of Damon Albarn
I was going through a break up. I was depressed... I really did need to do something. Recording an album was a great escape. I don't know what would have happened if I wouldn't have started to work.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Albums
Image of Damon Albarn
I'm an English songwriter/composer, working in Mandarin and trying to find something about Chinese culture that I really relate to and respect and feel some genuine emotions for - and it's quite hard, the pentatonic scale, and that, in a way, is why I think it works. Because I'm forced to limit myself to quite strict rules about what I did. Maybe that's how I avoided pastiche.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Thinking
Image of Damon Albarn
I used to be younger than my producers but now I'm older than my producers and I think that works for me, that works better cause you get a good kick up the ... everyday.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Thinking
Image of Damon Albarn
I'm slightly ambivalent to the whole relationship between the whole advertising world and music. I think sometimes it works and sometimes it's a really bad mismatch. I think on this occasion its fine because the iPod is like your own mini-library and that can't be a bad thing. It promotes eclecticism and that's very much what we are about so it's a good relationship.
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Thinking
Image of Damon Albarn
I'm not really one of those people who believes that if you're a musician you can just leave that behind and start getting into politics
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Believe
Image of Damon Albarn
When you're doing a deal with someone in the southern Sahara, it's a very different way of doing business than in London. You can't sign them in the usual way because they'd end up getting ripped off, which would defeat the object of setting up a label like this
- Damon Albarn
Collection: Southern