page_title: Gorillaz
section_title: Demon Days (2004–07)
hierarchical_section_title: Gorillaz / History / Demon Days (2004–07)
caption_attribution_description: Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) playing with Broken Bells in 2010
context_page_description: Gorillaz are a British virtual band created in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett. The band primarily consists of four animated members: Stuart "2-D" Pot, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle, and Russel Hobbs. Their fictional universe is presented in music videos, interviews and short cartoons. In reality, Albarn is the only permanent musical contributor, and Gorillaz' music often features collaborations with a wide range of featured artists. Remi Kabaka Jr. became producer for the band in 2016 after several years providing the voice of Russel Hobbs and was listed as an official member alongside Albarn and Hewlett in the 2019 documentary Gorillaz: Reject False Icons.
  With Gorillaz, Albarn departed from the distinct Britpop of his band Blur, exploring a variety of musical styles including hip hop, electronic music, and world music through an "eccentrically postmodern" approach. The band's 2001 debut album Gorillaz, which featured dub and Latin influences, went triple platinum in the UK and double platinum in Europe, with sales driven by the success of the album's lead single "Clint Eastwood".
context_section_description: Albarn spent the majority of 2003 on tour with Blur in support of their newly released album Think Tank, however upon completion of the tour decided to return to Gorillaz, reuniting with Hewlett to prepare for a second album. Hewlett explained that the duo chose to continue Gorillaz to prove that the project was not "a gimmick": "If you do it again, it's no longer a gimmick, and if it works then we've proved a point." The result was Demon Days, released on 11 May 2005. The album was another major commercial success, debuting at #1 on the UK Albums Charts and #6 on the US Billboard 200, and has since gone six times platinum in the UK, double platinum in the United States, and triple platinum in Australia, outperforming sales of the first album and becoming the band's most successful album to date. The album's success was partially driven by the success of the lead single "Feel Good Inc." featuring hip-hop group De La Soul, which topped Billboard's Alternative Songs chart in the U.S. for eight consecutive weeks and was featured in a commercial for Apple's iPod. The album was also supported by the later singles "Dare", "Dirty Harry", and the double A-side "Kids with Guns" / "El Mañana".
  Demon Days found the band taking a darker tone, partially influenced by a train journey Albarn had taken with his family through impoverished rural China. Albarn described the album as a concept album: "The whole album kind of tells the story of the night — staying up during the night — but it's also an allegory. It's what we're living in basically, the world in a state of night." Believing that the album needed "a slightly different approach" compared to the first album, Albarn enlisted American producer Brian Burton, better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, to produce the album, whom Albarn praised as "one of the best young producers in the world" after hearing his 2004 mashup album The Grey Album. Burton felt he and Albarn had a high degree of affinity with each other, stating in an interview on the creation of the album: "We never had any arguments. We even have that finish-each-other’s-sentences thing happening. There are a lot of the same influences between us, like Ennio Morricone and psychedelic pop-rock, but he has 10 years on me, so I have some catching up to do. Where he can school me on new wave and punk of the late ’70s/early ’80s, I can school him on a lot of hip-hop. We’re very competitive and pushed each other." Similar to the first album, Demon Days features collaborations with several different artists, including Bootie Brown, Shaun Ryder, Ike Turner, MF Doom (who was recording with Danger Mouse as Danger Doom at the time) and Martina Topley-Bird, among others.
   The band chose to forgo traditional live touring in support of Demon Days, instead limiting live performance during the album cycle to a five night residency in November 2005 at the Manchester Opera House billed as Demon Days Live. The concerts saw the band performing the album in full each night with most featured artists from the album present. Unlike the debut album's tour, the live band was visible on stage in view of the audience but obscured by lighting in such a way that only their silhouettes were visible, with a screen above the band displaying Hewlett's visuals alongside each song. The residency was later repeated in April 2006 at New York City's Apollo Theater and the Manchester performances were later released on DVD as Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House.
  The virtual Gorillaz members again "performed" at the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards in November 2005, and again at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2006, appearing to perform on stage via Musion Eyeliner technology. Albarn later expressed disappointment at the execution of the performance, citing the low volume level required so as to not disturb the technology: "That was tough... They started and it was so quiet cause they've got this piece of film that you've got to pull over the stage so any bass frequencies would just mess up the illusion completely." At the Grammys, the band
caption: Albarn asked Danger Mouse to produce the band's second album Demon Days after hearing his mashup album The Grey Album
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "SONY DSC", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSLR-A350", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2010:06:02 13:47:47", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "238", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 6, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "30572", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5852", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/100", "EXIF FNumber": "2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Action", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "3200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:05:25 21:23:54", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:05:25 21:23:54", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "8", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "-69/50", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "17/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "135", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4592", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3056", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "30324", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "202", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}