I stay up all night sometimes watching binary streak across my computer screen. Stare long enough and your eyes fog over, you open another realm of perception and those digits become a CODE. Vast tracts of data rushing around the world lightning-fast. Most of it useless. Facebook-inane. Occasionally, a gem flickers at you, demanding attention. One evening, I recognised one such gem as an invitation not to be dismissed. It read:
End of Days. The Last Great Party.Location: Plastic Beach 48° 52′ 36″ S, 123° 23′ 36″ WBring a bottle.Soundtrack supplied.Your host… M. Niccals. (Gorillaz) x
Life had become increasingly dull and the one-two punch of ‘End of Days’ and ‘Last Great Party’ gorged the starving hedonist in me. Gorillaz know how to throw down a phat jam. Plus they’ve just delivered a new album called Plastic Beach.
I punched the co-ordinates into Google Maps and was plonked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. End of Days at the End of the World. How inconvenient. Ever the dubious bastard, I hatched an ingenious plan. Contacting my editor, Dave, I told him I’d landed an exclusive invite to kick it VIP at The Last Great Party. Hosted by none other than the deranged Gorillaz mastermind Murdoch Niccals. Naturally, Dave whooped it up and told me to spare no expense to nail this story. I immediately purchased a top-line offshore powerboat and charged it to the magazine.
Knowing Murdoch’s no stranger to debauchery I managed to source a bottle of designer hallucinogens on eBay and likewise slapped them on the company card. It would be crass to arrive alone so I hit up a local escort agency, swiping plastic and securing three lovely ‘companions.’
Even in a powerboat doing 85 knots, the journey was arduous. My companions got shit-faced and fell overboard off the coast of Chile never to be seen again. A small loss considering I came upon a drifting life-raft filled with refugee schmodels shortly thereafter. Murdoch would know what to do with them. He’s circled the globe hob-knobbing with the A-class since the Gorillaz’ debut dropped onto the charts in 2001.
Thankfully, Plastic Beach loomed in the distance just as the models’ collective hunger became palpable and they all began licking me and moaning.
Plastic Beach is so quintessentially Murdochian, a true monument to excess: an island of plastic waste; mankind’s excrement collected on tides and fused at the ass-end of the world. Murdoch has somehow fashioned it into a luxurious hideout/recording studio.He enjoyed the gift of the refugees so much that he didn’t care I’d gate-crashed his stronghold. I handed him the bottle from eBay. He raised a toast to his success before necking the entire thing. As the substance took hold Murdoch became increasingly unhinged and confessional. Worn out from the journey, I was terribly unfocused but here are some contextless quotes I do recall: ‘The cyborg Noodle said her first words the other day -“Noodle!”, bless her metal socks’; ‘…looked up demon summoning in my magical grimoire entitled “Pseudomonarchia Deamonum”, opened up a portal and tottered my way down to Hell’; ’I hear one more vocoder I’m going to have to go round with a hammer and individually smash every plug-in’; ‘A couple of collaborators refused so I had to use another method of coercion. Well, chloroform and Rohypnol really’; ‘I’ve been shot at loads out here. They put a hole in my island the other day. That’s how our single ‘Stylo’ got leaked. Siphoned out of my island by some filthy Russian pirates.’
He then pumped Plastic Beach obscenely loud… must say it sounds glorious with zero reflective surfaces for miles. Bobby Womack, Lou Reed and Mos Def serenading infinity is a rare delight. He gleefully shared how he stole music from Damon Albarn for this record and raved about finding out that he fathered all of the band members of The Horrors.
Then he passed out, leaving me to my devices on a pink trash island with all the salivating schmodels.
Written By : James Rose-Mathew
