"I literally made it on the road. 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.” - Damon Albarn

Damon Albarn recorded The Fall in the Gorillaz tour bus in between tour stops using only an iPad and a modest stack of outboard gear. It’s certainly the most electronic-sounding Gorillaz record up to that point, with moody downtempo synthscapes and sparse 808 snaps being the sound du jour (“Detroit” could easily have been a Neptunes production from the period), with fewer guest appearances than most Gorillaz records but the features are high profile and hard hitting. Albarn provides the lion’s share of the vocals with a lone contribution from the late great Bobby Womack (“Bobby In Phoenix”); Mick Jones (“Hillbilly Man”) and Paul Simonon (“Aspen Forest”) of The Clash guest on guitar and bass, respectively. The Fall received a short vinyl run in the UK in 2011 and remained out of print until Record Store Day 2019. This is the first widely available repress on black vinyl.

• black vinyl pressing
• printed inner sleeve
• music label: Parlophone 2019

reviewed by Diper911 08/2019