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Gorillaz (or Damon Albarn, anyway) make some
sublime tunes. They also have, even though such a
thing should be constitutionally illegal, even better
visuals. Unfortunately here, it's not so much a case
of style over substance as style drowning and
smothering substance to within an inch of its
miserable life and then spitting it out and stamping
on it to keep it down.
Slowboat to Hades could be beautiful - and, of
course, in places it is. The problem is that those
places are so hard to find that by the time you've got
there, you'll have lost the will to live.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I really am too old for
this but I just don't have the temperament or the
patience to have to wrestle with navigation that's so
unclear and incomprehensible that after an hour and a
half of wrangling with the DVD player, the remote
control and the TV set, I'd managed to find just 16 of
the 41 tracks listed on the press release: 1-9, 12,
15, 16, 20, 26, 36 and 39 (I think - more on the
problems of that later), if you really care. Some of
those had come round three times, through different
routes, usually while trying to escape from virtual
rooms with names like The Hellhole. At least they're
honest.
Let's look on the bright side. When the videos,
animatics (storyboards, we called them in the old
days), spoof MTV shows and live performances are
playing they are of course stunningly beautiful, as
Jamie Hewlett is a graphic artist par excellence. But
they don't play for long enough before you have to go
back into bad computer game graphics and navigate
through treacle to find the next short helping of
audiovisual pleasure, during which time you'll
probably fall into an out-of-date ad for polyphonic
ringtones or a video/animatic you've seen twice
before, while missing half of the other things you're
meant to be looking at.
Which really is a shame as in amongst all of this
there are some real gems, such as the minimalist
visual for Murdoc is God - a simple cross on a silent
movie celluloid effect, which would (and no doubt
does) look superb on a nightclub screen. Gorillaz'
lardy drummer thinking about himself dressed in a
ballet tutu while actually being dressed as Oliver
Hardy.
And that makes it even more frustrating that
there's more of this hidden beneath a ton of Easter
eggs I can't be bothered to ferret out. Amid the
apocalyptic skylines, floating bases and abandoned
hideouts, it's just too much hard work. I want to
enjoy the experience, not have to fight with it every
four minutes before it gives me anything worth having.
It's the audiovisual equivalent of dinner with a
spoilt, petulant three-year-old.
If you're a Gorillaz uber-nerd, all of this may be
manna from heaven. Maybe you know all about that rare
Capsule Hotel Ident and you'll really enjoy the
Japanese endurance test that finding it will take. If
you're not, one of Slowboat's worst faults is that it
doesn't tell you what anything is: where it came from,
what you've watched - let alone where you might want
to go next.
Guess what? The package also contains a CD-Rom
containing 16 games, eight screensavers, 45 wallpapers
(why does anyone need that many?) and "achievement
based extras". If you make it to the end of this, you
damn well deserve them. Or, alternately, you could
think about getting a life.
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