Gorillaz - D-Sides (2007/2017) [HDTracks]

In 2007, pop renaissance man Damon Albarn continued to work at an almost unrivaled pace, unveiling both his psychogeographic London concept suite/supergroup the Good, the Bad and the Queen and writing and staging his first opera, Monkey: Journey to the West, at the Manchester International Festival. Now as the year draws to a close, almost as an afterthought, he's put together another peculiarly rewarding double album of Gorillaz outtakes, B-sides and, remixes.

Gorillaz is the kind of project that used to define adventurous British pop-- a love of African-American music combined with an art school interest in multimedia presentation. These days you could argue that it's precisely Jamie Hewlett's animated mask-- the cartoonface, if you will-- that's given Albarn the license to monkey around with hip-hop in a way to gladden the heart of the Sasha Frere-Jones' of the world. It's provided the necessary distraction from the otherwise overwhelming image of a pasty old white English indie dude deciding to make records with Dan the Automator, Dangermouse, and De La Soul.

The first disc of this double album set is evenly split between sketches and absolute gems. "People" is an early demo of the irresistably bubblefunk "Dare" which demonstrates, by his absence, what a canny idea it was to recruit Shaun Ryder. "Rockit" is an amusing one-off, a parodically uninspired slice of cockney geezer electro that might have been knocked out by Ian Dury in an off moment. But tracks like "We Are Happy Landfill" and "Murdoc Is God" feel like studio doodles that got out of hand.

The best songs, ironically, aren't really Gorillaz tunes at all, but seem to have wound up here for want of a better home. "Hong Kong", a beautiful late-night urban lament-- filigreed with Chinese zither played by Zeng Zhen-- was an encore and heart-stopping highlight of the Gorillaz stage show, but was originally commissioned by the charity Warchild and feels like an Albarn solo song in all but name. And the same could be said for "Stop The Dams", a lovely, moving Icelandic protest song, complete with oddball rant from Einar Örn, once of the Sugarcubes.

The second disc consists of some dutiful remixes of "Dare" and "Feel Good Inc" from the DFA, Soulwax, and Hot Chip, but is notably chiefly for an absolute hash of a remake of "Kids With Guns" courtesy of the would-be English street urchin Jamie T. More rewarding by far is the "Chinese NY" reimagining of "Dirty Harry" in Mandarin.

2007 ends with rumours of a full Blur reunion scotched once more, and reports of a full-length Gorillaz movie in production. You wonder if Albarn is spurred to all this solo and side-project activity by the refusal of Graham Coxon to rejoin the fold, the failure of his original band to properly regroup. If so, ideally the reunion will be infinitely postponed, giving us several more projects with the wit and daffy ingenuity of Gorillaz rather than the prospect of one more conventional careerist rock record.