Damon Albarn has always been a musician who shares a certain rapport with the musical zeitgeist of his time. Ever since his band Blur revitalised British pop with their 1993 album Modern Life Is Rubbish, he’s gone above and beyond to innovate. Blur reinvented themselves once again on 1997’s Blur, abandoning the 1990s Britpop they helped pioneer for a more eclectic, more fragmented sound.
In 2001, Albarn took his biggest leap yet into the music of the future with an idiosyncratic and now-familiar new project, Gorillaz, which was soon honoured by the Guinness Book of World Records as the Most Successful Virtual Band. Now, with The Fall, Gorillaz’s latest release, Albarn rides another trend into the future; the album was recorded entirely on an iPad during the band’s 2010 tour in support of Plastic Beach.