Tag: Monkey

The problem I have with collecting music digitally is it’s easy for one-off projects to fall between the cracks. Some of my favourite vinyl releases were weird and wonderful oddities and it was always a treat to find them lurking between the more regular vinyl releases. I’ve thought long and hard about getting back into vinyl, but the simple truth is two fold: 1. it’d ruin me financially and 2. I’m too reliant on Apple Music and have grown accustomed to having just about everything at my fingertips instantly.

I’m listening to the Overkill album by Motörhead from ‘79 as I write this and the idea of having to get up to physically find the album and deal with a record player seems archaic and exhausting. I know that that’s exactly what appeals to vinyl-heads like Steve, but I’m Buck Rogers here. I may pine occasionally for the 20th century, but I’m not giving up my fucking rocket-ship.

What I will pay for is a great stage show and back in 2008 or thereabouts we saw Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s Monkey: Journey to the West here in London. It was breathtaking and magnificent, but more importantly fun. The book was a staple of my childhood before the TV show grabbed hold of me and never let go. I simply adore this tale and its characters and to see it brought to life in such a unique way was a real highlight for me that year. The album is a fantastic companion-piece and I’d honestly  forgotten about it despite loving the stage show.

Hewlett made a fantastic video for the single release too and here’s the trailer for the actual show:

I’ve never been a huge Blur fan, but I’m an admirer of Albarn and have a lot of respect for his work. His partnership with Antonia Bird on both FACE (1997) and RAVENOUS (1999) I think has real cultural significance and I’ve always been a huge champion of anything that is really ambitious and unexpected.

Journey to the West and the subsequent album are both and if you haven’t had the pleasure I highly recommend you check it out.

PS Fuck the Olympics, but this was lovely: