Ah…them Gorillaz, the worlds first successful ‘virtual band’. Well, that’s debatable seeing how there were others before them, like The Archies and Alvin and the Chipmunks, with The Chipmunks still churning out content left and right, amazing really considering that they have been around since 1958. There are currently a few other ‘virtual bands’ besides the Gorillaz that are doing quite well for themselves. Here in the U.S. we have Dethklok, a band we became familiar with after one of the employees at our comic book store told us to check them out on the Cartoon network, Sweden has Crazy Frog, which was created in 1997, and Japan has Genki Rockets. Genki Rockets has only one lead fictional character, Lumi…an 18-year old girl born in space on September 11, 2037. Interestingly Lumi is also a computer-generated character, odd really, because one look at her music videos and you would think that she is real. Maybe Lumi is modeled after a real life human, I don’t know, but you can hit the link below and judge that one for yourself.

Back to the U.K. group known as the Gorillaz. Since their debut a few years back, I’ve been quite fond of a couple of their songs; primarily off they’re Demon Days album. Today, March 03, 2010 will be the release of their 3rd album Plastic Beach, premiering first in Japan, March 05 & 08 in Europe, and on March 09, 2010 we’ll see the U.S and Canadian release of Plastic Beach. I didn’t know anything about it, because I’m not one to keep up with what the Gorillaz are doing, but last night I was kind of bored with the one-eyed glass monster and decided to log on to the virtual video dump that is You Tube to see what the masses are watching, and the Gorillaz latest video to their first single off their new album popped up. I watched and noticed that this video had the Gorillaz in 3D, composited in a live-action setting. The 3D animation was smooth, close to being life-like, but it worked well seeing how the live-action footage was fast paced and had Bruce Willis making a cameo along with his trademark ‘smirk’. I guess Bruce Willis is this generations Clint Eastwood, watch the video and you’ll see what I mean. I didn’t catch it at first while watching the video (too busy taking in the action), but the song is a collaboration with Mos Def and Bobby Womack. You can actually hear the entire album before purchasing it. Most of the tracks on the album are collaborations with other artists, like Sinfonia VIVA, Snopp Dogg, Gruff Rhys, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Mark E Smith, Lou Reed, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Kano, Bashy and the National Orchestra for Arabic Music.

Gorillaz “Stylo” music video

Gorillaz- Plastic Beach: Exclusive album preview

Ginki Rockets video link (click on any one of the three pictures to activate video):