Anything could happen to 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle and Russel in the Gorillaz universe. They could be driving through a desert and suddenly find themselves in a high-speed car chase with Bruce Willis hunting them on behalf of a gang of pirates. Jack Black could be jamming on a guitar in Venice Beach, California, with 2-D skating in the background before being rudely tripped by Russel. Green-faced Murdoc could go to jail for smuggling drugs and, for a while, be replaced in the band with Ace, the Gangreen Gang hoodlum from The Powerpuff Girls.
When you love Gorillaz, you become invested in the character lore too. It’s almost like a movie franchise comes to life with each album release. Everything is connected. So when the animated members of the virtual band fled to Mumbai with fake passports after escaping the Forever Cult and subsequent arrest, fans immediately began speculating whether their next chapter would unfold in India.
Indeed, it did. Early sketches for The Mountain show the quartet inside local trains in Jaipur, on the backs of motorcycles in Haryana, in front of ashrams in Varanasi, rocking mundus and wearing bindis. There’s something mystical about them now. The music, too, seems divinely charged, featuring contributions from Asha Bhosle, Asha Puthli, Ajay Prasanna and others. The Gorillaz co-creators, musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, themselves seem transformed when they speak about the album, India and death, with 2-D, Murdoc, Noodle, Russel and two very special collaborators chiming in.
Vogue India: The Mountain is the title of the album as well as the first song on it. Were you inspired by an actual mountain or a metaphorical one?
Damon Albarn: On our first trip to India, we went to Fort Amer in Jaipur and it was a magical moment for us. The music emanated from there, so we named the album The Mountain. But it’s also a mountain we visited in Western China years ago, which was so high that you couldn’t even light a match at the top.
Jamie Hewlett: There was a temple on top with Buddhist monks. You could stand at the edge and look down at the clouds. I was trying to light a cigarette but it just wouldn’t spark.
Damon Albarn: And then, during the descent, I got lost.
Jamie Hewlett: Damon got lost in 500, no, 5,000 square miles of forest. And it was getting dark.
Damon Albarn: I ended up on a road and got picked up by a guy on a scooter. He then took me up another mountain, stopped with me on the back and got into a domestic row on the phone for half an hour. At which point, I thought I may never actually return to civilisation. I was convinced it was the end. Yeah, we’ve had some lovely experiences on mountains so it was easy for us to rally around that image.
Vogue India: What did India feel like for you? I ask this because many come here in search of the ‘meaning of life’ and don’t always find it. Did you feel like you found it?
Jamie Hewlett: I didn’t go looking for it and certainly didn’t find it in the ways it was presented to us or the average tourist visiting India. We didn’t fall for any ‘gurus’, although we would’ve loved to meet a real sadhu. I know the ones outside our hotel in Varanasi weren’t real because they’d… [Hewlett points to the sky, then extends an open palm as if asking for money.] Instead, I found meaning in some of the people we travelled with who put up with us for weeks on end and were so generous with their time.
Damon Albarn: One of our most profound experiences was eating dal and chapati (in a langar) with thousands of people at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Russel: India reminds you that power isn’t just strength; it’s thought, patience and madness all at once.
Vogue India: As ever, a man of few words, Russel. Say, 2-D, didn’t you go to a silent retreat in the Himalayas 10 years ago to prepare for a reconciliation with Murdoc? Were you successful?
2-D: I’m good at forgiving and especially forgetting because of all my concussions over the years. What was the question again? Oh yeah, Murdoc. We’ve become a lot closer on this trip to Jaipur. He forgot his sleeping bag so we had to share mine.
Vogue India: I’m happy for you both. Damon, Jamie, are there any specific sights from your time in India that are seared into your brain?
Jamie Hewlett: My first time in Jaipur, I was riding around in a tuk-tuk and got stuck in a traffic jam with every kind of vehicle imaginable, alongside goats, cows and children for company. At some point, a massive foot came down next to my tuk-tuk, and I looked up and saw an elephant beside me. It was being ridden from one side of the city to an elephant reserve on the other side. It nudged in front of our tuk-tuk and I thought to myself, “Wow, I’ve just been overtaken by an elephant.” That kind of blew my mind.
Damon Albarn: It would be cool to do some kind of cultural exchange between our cows.
Jamie Hewlett: Damon is fascinated by the freedom cows enjoy in India. If they’re in the street, you drive around them, right?
Vogue India: You cannot disturb a cow in India.
Damon Albarn: I live in the English countryside and have to encounter cows all the time. They could really take a leaf out of your cows’ book.
Jamie Hewlett: They have as much right to be here as us. So just drive around the cow. It makes complete sense. If there were a cow on Oxford Street, all of London would shut down. I love that wonderful chaos. The mathematics of driving around India is also fascinating. A friend was driving me around Jaipur and I was so impressed that no one was crashing into each other. He said, “I can drive in Jaipur without even thinking, but if I go to Mumbai, I can’t do it.” There’s a different rhythm to the driving in each city, right? You kind of understand where you’re all going to turn and nobody crashes?
Vogue India: We do crash; we just get right back up and continue on our way.
Jamie Hewlett: That’s one of the wonderful mysteries I’d like to keep a mystery. So don’t tell me you crash. Tell me you never crash.
Vogue India: We never crash, Jamie. Damon, I heard the faint strain of a roadside band playing in the background at the end of ‘The Plastic Guru’. Did you find India sonically intense?
Damon Albarn: Yes. I loved the early morning song in some of the Hindu temples when the curtain comes up for the first time. The Sufi devotional singing on Fridays in Old Delhi was also extraordinary. I’ve become a devotee of the conch. I bought one and now use it in my own practice.
Jamie Hewlett: Visually, too, there’s something interesting going on in every square metre of India. That’s why we took our photographer with us—drawing a single backdrop would probably take me a year. I wanted to photograph everything and then put the characters into those scenes. It would have been impossible to replicate what was happening on the streets of Jaipur or Delhi through a sketch because it’s thousands of years of cultural evidence. I love it. I’m not finished with India. I need more.
Vogue India: You’ve collaborated with some of India’s best musical talent on The Mountain. In the song ‘The Shadowy Light’, Asha Bhosle sings about ‘the river of life’. What do you think she means?
Asha Bhosle: I’ll take that one, thank you. In one part of ‘The Shadowy Light’, I sing, “Chal mere raahi, gehra hain paani, mujhe jaana hain uss paar.” I’m telling the boatman to ferry me across the river, which is my life’s journey: my birth, my relationships, my dedication to music, my achievements, my duties as a mother, daughter, sister, wife and Indian. The boatman is a metaphor for my music, which has guided me across this river of life. When I get to the other side, my journey will be complete and I will attain moksha. If you listen carefully, you will be able to discern thousands of sounds floating around us. I shall become one of them. This freedom to become one with nature is what awaits me on the other side of the river.
Murdoc: I’d love to add my two cents here but due to an ongoing legal battle with Him Downstairs, I’m not at liberty to discuss my soul with any third party. Letting go is part of life though, isn’t it? Chuck it in the stream and watch it drift away. Very healing.
Vogue India: A special appearance by Murdoc—what a treat. Damon, Jamie, now that you’ve finally wrapped up the album, how are you kicking back?
Damon Albarn: I find ways to fill my time while I wait for him to finish doing his part. I’m really quick and he’s really slow.
Jamie Hewlett: No, it’s just that what I do takes time. But the idea of ‘kicking back’ from what we do seems pointless because what we do is so much fun. It’s not like, “I can’t wait for the weekend, I hate my job.” No, I love my job. The holiday would be going to India and coming back with ideas to turn into work.
Vogue India: But what happens when your work—the kind of unexpected collaborations and art that only humans could once think of—is generated by AI? Where do we go from here?
Jamie Hewlett: Challenge it.
Damon Albarn: If AI is a self-generating facsimile of our current reality, then we have to prove that we still reign supreme when it comes to imagination. If we can’t keep up, it deserves to inherit what we’ve built. We’ve just got to relearn the joy of ritual and hard work.
Jamie Hewlett: Technology is going to make us lazier and lazier. It’s going to get to a point where we become like the humans in Wall-E who are too fat to get out of their floaty chairs and just press buttons with the one finger that still works. That’s the future.
Vogue India: That’s a bleak visual. It’s been 25 years since you released your debut single ‘Clint Eastwood’. Congratulations on your silver jubilee of working together. How different is it now?
Damon Albarn: Far fewer hangovers. Apart from that, pretty similar.
Jamie Hewlett: I love Damon’s music. He gives me music to put visuals to. How lucky can I be?
Vogue India: Damon, do you want to give Jamie a compliment?
Damon Albarn: [Dryly] Knowing Jamie has been one of the great joys of my life.
Vogue India: Okay, level with me. Is an India tour on the cards?
Damon Albarn: If we don’t play in India, what’s the point of this album?
Asha Puthli: I’m so excited for them to finally perform in India because I felt a strong sense of spiritual kinship with Damon when we were recording ‘The Moon Cave’. It was like a great feeling of comfort that comes from a past-life familial connection, like we belong to the same creative tribe. Throughout the process, there was a natural sync with what Damon and Jamie were creating with The Mountain, an experience that is certainly a peak in my life, pun intended.
Vogue India: How wonderful, Asha. Damon, Jamie, has your idea of what happens after death changed since making The Mountain?
Damon Albarn: It’s becoming clearer to me that life after death has something to do with quantum physics.
Jamie Hewlett: Yeah, like AI is a modern form of magic, quantum physics is a modern form of religion. And you can also find ideas of what happens after death in India—that knowledge has existed for over 2,000 years. If you care enough to have a look.
Damon Albarn: The past is so much smarter than the future.
Jamie Hewlett: The way we’re going, that might be true. To answer your question, I don’t know what happens after death, but I’m less bothered by it now.
Damon Albarn: We’re definitely closer to it.
Noodle: We each have our own hell. Mine was pretty dark; you don’t want to go there. I’ve learned that hell is never the final stop—just a detour.
Vogue India: Thanks for that, Noodle.
Jamie Hewlett: I’m still ruminating on that one. But I’m not afraid of death anymore.
Damon Albarn: I think Jamie’s more afraid of losing his Vaseline lip balm than dying. [Brandishes Jamie’s tub of Vaseline, which has been sitting slightly off-screen the whole time.]
Jamie Hewlett: [Trying to pry it out of Damon’s hand] Nothing worse than dry lips in the afterlife. Damon, will you make sure I’m cremated with my lip balm?
Special thanks to Robach Music Group for making this Gorillaz interview possible.
This Gorillaz interview appears in Vogue India’s March-April 2026 issue. Subscribe here.
Also read:
Why are Indian musicians at the top of everyone’s playlists? Actually, it’s about time they were
Rhea Raj is making pop music for the girls that pop music left out
Gayathri Krishnan’s groovy classical-meets-R&B music will make you turn the volume up
