‘In a mythical time on the Mountain of Flower and Fruit, Monkey was hatched from a stone egg. So begins the tale of the Monkey King, our headstrong and self-important hero.”
One of the most surprising developments of 2008 is Monkey: Journey to the West (Just Music), an opera based on a 16th-century Chinese fable.
The opera was created from a collaboration between director Chen Shi-Zheng and the team behind Gorillaz, former Blur front man Damon Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett.
Albarn is a prodigious collaborator, having worked with Malian musicians Toumani Diabate and Afel Bocoum on an album titled Mali Music. With Nigerian Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen and Clash bassist Paul Simonon, he produced a project dubbed The Good, the Bad and the Queen and let’s not forget the host of featured artists who jumped on board the Gorillaz project.
Journey to the West is performed by both European and Chinese musicians and singers. What makes the album so impressive is Albarn’s ability to give the collaboration his subtle touch without strangling it or being too overbearing.
Monkey: Journey to the West is an incredibly brave step for Albarn. It could have bombed horribly and even if the opera was well received, one would expect the album — once divorced from its stage production — to sink. But it doesn’t.
This probably has a lot to do with the fact that Albarn approached the album as an entity on its own, rather than just a recording of the opera. Gone are the grandiose arrangements from the opera, replaced by lo-fi electronic adaptations of the music. The opening track, Monkey’s World, is a perfect introduction to this crazy sonic landscape. Stomping drums and what sounds like a Chinese traffic jam build into an electro groove, which sounds like Asia’s version of The Fall, before breaking down into a free jazz freak-out.
The album is littered with exotic percussion and string arrangements, backed by glitchy electro beats, over which a host of beautiful Chinese vocals soar.
Songs such as The Living Sea, Monk’s Song and Heavenly Peach Banquet have some stunning vocalists, which when combined with the otherworldly string instrumentation, are quite reminiscent of Mercury Rev’s psychedelic beauty.
In fact Heavenly Peach Banquet is quite easily the most beautiful song I have heard all year. Its lush, sweet vocals and strings arrangements are an instant road trip to a far away fantasy world, carrying the listener deep inside Monkey’s journey.
Another standout is March of the Volunteers an instrumental piece that explodes into a joyous concoction of sound.
On the whole Monkey: Journey to the West is a delightful experience for the more adventurous listener, like a door opening to a foreign culture, filled with a treasure trove of rhythms and sounds.
As China’s ever-growing shadow looms over the rest of the world, it’s great to know that musicians such as Albarn have begun to engage with this superpower and are tapping into the riches its culture has to share.