Gorillaz to release iPad album on Christmas as touring scales back

Gorillaz' Damon Albarn

Credit: AP Photo

We previously reported that Damon Albarn boasted crafting an entire Gorillaz album on his Apple iPad. Now it looks like fans will be able to reap the benefits of that effort for free on Christmas Day.

Gorillaz collaborator and artist Jamie Hewlett told Australian newspaper Perth Now that on that Christmas Eve, "a video for one of the new songs from the iPad album will be released. Then on Christmas Day fans get the whole album downloaded to their computer for free as a gift."

No word yet what the actual title of the effort will be, but Albarn had specific designs that it be out before the New Year.

"I literally made it on the road in America over a month. I didn't write it before, I didn't prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say 'Oh well, it's been tampered with,' but if I put it out now they'd know that I haven't done anything because I've been on tour ever since."

This, days after the group told a source at the Sydney Morning Herald that the 2010 Gorillaz tour, in support of latest "Plastic Beach," will probably be the last of its kind.

"[The tour's] been an unqualified success — bizarrely," Albarn says. "But as far as communicating an idea to an audience, who knows? I mean, we always think that when we get to a point where we've achieved something that it's time to stop, don't we?" he says to Hewlett.

How will they know when they've reached that point? "Well, I don't know; we'll see how we feel in January [after the tour]," Albarn says. "A period of reflection and sobriety," he chuckles.

Hewlett and Albarn indicate a growing storyline in the Gorillaz fictional history with the addition of a new character Cyborg Noodle, so at least it sounds like the band will continue on, even if the shows are scaled back. But, despite rumors, no Gorillaz movie is in the works.

"[N]o one's ever going to give me the sort of money I need to do the sort of evil, twisted story I want to tell," Hewlett said.

Gorillaz have a quartet of shows scheduled for the rest of the year.

Katie Hasty
Managing Editor

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After five years as a columnist and editor at Billboard, Katie Hasty joined HitFix in 2009 for music and film reporting out of New York. The Midwest native has worked as a writer, music promoter and in A&R since 1999 and performs with her band Numbers And Letters.