The Fall
Life on tour becomes a funkified odyssey—recorded on an iPad. *The Fall* moves with the hypnotic rhythm of the road, squelchy beats and loops veering wide of the yellow line. Over hazy layers of synths and guitar, Damon Albarn\'s wearied croons swerve between staring-out-the-window reflection and stir-crazy delirium.
A free Christmas release, billed as "the World's First iPad Album", this nice marketing gimmick is the result of Damon Albarn's restlessness on tour.
No one could’ve predicted that 16 years after the release of Parklife—among the most British-sounding of all the mid-’90s Britpop classics—the seminal album’s chief architect would tour U.S. arenas at the helm of a successful alt-electro cartoon band. But Gorillaz’s stateside popularity isn’t just a one-sided love…
The hook to The Fall is that it’s the first high-profile album to be recorded entirely on Apple’s iPad, Damon Albarn assembling these 15 song sketches as the Gorillaz tour rolled across America in the fall of 2010.
No wonder ‘The Fall’ never managed to live up to the lofty expectations attached to it in a barren December for music news not pertaining to the X Factor.
Made on an iPad during the band’s autumn tour of America, this hastily constructed, bleepy sketchbook of a record is a delight.
Damon Albarn has always been a musician who shares a certain rapport with the musical zeitgeist of his time.
Gorillaz' latest is a low-key set made on an iPad on tour. It has a few great flashes, reckons <strong>Alexis Petridis</strong>
Gorillaz - The Fall review: Gorillas are a threatened species. Gorillaz might be joining them at this rate.