Monkey: Journey to the West by Damon Albarn

Monkey: Journey to the West Reviews

Listen to this properly!
Back ground music this is not! This album is full of extraordinary sounds and feelings that are powerful and strange. It is impossible to listen to this as background music, but if you enjoy music for the range of emotions and physical experiences it evokes you will love this album. Yes, there is the trademark Albarn waltz underlying "I love Buddha", and the more westernised tracks tend to be underpinned by thumping Gorillaz baselines, but this album is as strange and different as it should be. There is no English, but Mandarin, many of the instruments are strange, and the melodies are rooted in Chinese folk traditions. You will either find this album wierd and inaccessible, or utterly exhilerating. Deserves to be listened to properly and loudly!!

Disappointing
I'd been really looking forward to this release, unfortunately I have to say it's the worst of Damon Albarn's career.

I was equally disappointed with the opera itself, which I saw last weekend. A few parts were very very good, but on the whole it's really dull.

Quite interesting, incidentally ... (6/10)
I have been a keen advoate of all things Damon Albarn post-Graham Coxon (i.e., Blur's `Think Tank` and beyond) so was understandably quite excited by the album release of `Monkey, Journey to the West`. I had not seen the Chinese opera-spectacular which this album scores but I didn't let that dissuade me from pre-ordering this one from Amazon. What I hadn't realised was that this 22-song collection largely comprises incidental compositions from the opera and doesn't stand up as an album in its own right. Unless you have seen the opera - in which case this might make a compelling souvenir - I feel duty-bound to warn you not to expect something on the scale of other Albarn side-projects such as Gorillaz' `Demon Days`, `Mali Music` or `The Good, the Bad and the Queen`.

There are handfull of lovely individual songs - particularly the Himalayan Kate Bushisms of `Heavenly Peach Blanket' - but the majority are sonic doodles of varying interest. Predominantly comprising synths and drum machines, fleshed out with guitar, harp and strings, some are diverting enough - even narrational - in their own right, but most score some unseen action intelligable only to those who have seen the production. The effect is sometimes frustratingly akin to being stuck in a theatre foyer ticketless while the action gets underway without you in the audience. And unlike a traditional opera, the music seems rather secondary - or at least only complementary to - the action on stage, rather than the other way around. As a souvenir, it's an attractive package, but I've never been a fan of Jamie Hewlett's artwork - Gorillaz for me was always just about the music.

good but great?
is this any good, yes. would it be any good without damon albarns name on it? yes but surely wouldn't make the light of day on western charts. its a great opeara score and the good thing is even without having seen the show, its easy to imagine how track names complement the music.. worth buying, still undecided.

A beautiful banquet for the ears
Just received the album this morning, and on the first listen I am taken to a different world of sounds, which spark so many emotions. I feel as if I am traveling with monkey and his pals.

I haven't seen the opera, but this certainly gives me a private peek into how this amazing project came together!!! Good work boys!