This is also your ticket to a live virtual listening party of their new album.
Since officially announcing their new album Humanz back in March, the mega popular virtual band Gorillaz have released four new singles, a record-breaking 360-degree music video, announced a series of live haunted houses in Brooklyn, Berlin & Amsterdam AND confirmed plans for a 10-episode television series. So you’d think the creative minds responsible for the award-winning cartoon group (Damon Albarn & Jamie Hewlett) would probably be slowing down till the albums April 28th release, right? WRONG!
On-top of all the aforementioned goodies, fans will also have the chance to personally explore the eccentric Gorillaz crib themselves via a brand new mixed reality app directly from the alt hip hop gang themselves. The versatile app, faithfully entitled Gorillaz, gives users an in-depth tour of the bands “luxurious” estate using a unique combination of augmented reality and virtual reality. You begin by using your smartphone’s camera to look around your room in AR and locate several floating icons ranging from a golden Buddha statue to an extremely unsettling cartoon mask.
Each object will transport you to a different room in the house such as a torn-up living room where the guitarist Noodle is working on some chords or the bedroom of the lead singer 2D where you’ll find him concentrating on writing new lyrics with a seemingly possessed typewriter. Each scene also features extra bits of content you can access by selecting hidden items located throughout. Noodle’s room for instance features an item that will play 10 minutes of soothing meditation music. Russel’s room hides links to several pieces of activist content.
The real magic however is in the bedroom of their satanic bassist, Murdoc. There you can tap on a pair of old school 3D glasses located on his Austin Powers esque bed to view the same experience in virtual reality (Compatible with most headsets). Selecting new rooms to view is then just a matter of staring at the portal above your head or below your feet.
Don’t mistake this for a cheap download you’ll play around with and then uninstall an hour later. The neat little experience is receiving several updates to its narrative environment as well as new bits of exclusive content. One of the coolest upcoming additions is a live virtual listening party of the new album set to take place near the April 28th release. This app will serve as your official ticket to the event, so find another way to clear up space on your phone as you’ll be wanting to hang on to this for awhile.
The Gorillaz app is available for free on Android and iOS. Humanz is in stores April 28th.
If you haven’t checked out the 360 music video for Saturnz Barz (Spirit House), which was recently confirmed as having the most successful 360-degree music video debut of all time, I highly suggest you strap on a headset and give it a shot.
