When Apple create its next iPad ad, there’s another word it might want to add another word: Gorillaz. Damon Albarn has recorded the next album for his all-inclusive superband entirely on his Apple tablet, and he’s about to let everyone hear it for free.
Albarn first revealed that he’d created an album’s worth of material on his iPad last month, telling the NME:
I’ve made it on an iPad – I hope I’ll be making the first record on an iPad. I fell in love with my iPad as soon as I got it, so I’ve made a completely different kind of record.
For those concerned that an iPad-recorded “completely different kind of record” (recorded during downtime on the band’s recent US tour; Albarn said “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”) might not live up to previous efforts like Plastic Beach or Demon Days, there’s an upside: You might not have to pay to find out. Yesterday, Albarn’s Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett revealed that the new album will be released in its entirety through the band’s website on Christmas Day:
At the moment we’ve got an advent calendar on our website and there is a daily door that opens to reveal a gift. On 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.
Well, maybe not entirely free; it’s still unclear whether everyone will be able to get the album from the site on Christmas Day, or whether the new album will be the Christmas “extra special cool stuff” promised to members of Sub Division, the band’s official fanclub, membership of which costs $45.
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