The Book Tower

Anyone of a certain age will remember the very strange television programme called Monkey. This Chinese TV series was dubbed into English and aired by the BBC in the late 70s/early 80s. Each week three characters called Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy had mad adventures and jumped about. That was about as far as it went, and if you were a fan of Monkey you probably also liked The Water Margin.

My ears pricked up recently when I heard that Damon Albarn had written a stage musical based on the 16th Century Chinese novel by Wu Cheng’en. Monkey: Journey to the West continues the Monkey legend and features artwork by Jamie Hewlett, who was responsible for the Gorillaz look and feel.

I’ve been a fan of Albarn for ages. His music, through Blur, Gorillaz and The Good, the Bad and the Queen has always been excellent and inventive. He’s also never shy to push the boat out, and this latest project sees him leaving the shore completely. The album Journey to the West was released this week and I admit my first impressions were ones of bafflement. I guess I was expecting an extension to Gorillaz, but that’s not the case. Whilst the two albums Albarn made with that band were pretty experimental at times, Monkey makes them look like Bucks Fizz records. It’s challenging to say the least, Albarn doesn’t sing on it and it largely comes across as Brian Eno after too much rice wine. I kind of gave up on it all last night. I even emailed a friend saying the album was rubbish.

But gingerly I put the album back on again tonight (or, in the modern way, fired it up in iTunes). The headache that’s been bugging me all week and making me grumpy has almost cleared and I’m finding fresh and original things in this weird music. What’s a barrier is the lack of the visual feast I would imagine that the original stage show was, but this is still a worthy addition to the Albarn canon. It’s not one for the dinner party, even if you’re cooking for die-hard Damon Albarn fans – they’re likely to have the same first impressions as me. But it goes in the grower category, and I’ve already identified two really stand out tracks, Heavenly Peach Banquet and Monkey Bee. This is a record I might be listening to for a long time to make sense of. At least until his next project comes along.