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Monkey: Journey To The West |
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Artist:
Damon Albarn
Average Customer Rating: 
List Price: £13.99
Our Price: £3.95
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Disc 1:
| 1. Monkey's World | | 2. Monkey Travels | | 3. Into The Eastern Sea | | 4. Living Sea | | 5. Dragon King | | 6. Iron Rod | | 7. Out Of The Eastern Sea | | 8. Heavenly Peach Banquet | | 9. Battle In Heaven | | 10. O Mi To Fu | | 11. Whisper | | 12. Tripitaka's Curse | | 13. Confessions Of A Pig | | 14. Sandy The River Demon | | 15. March Of The Volunteers | | 16. White Skeleton Demon | | 17. Monk's Song | | 18. I Love Buddha | | 19. March Of The Iron Army | | 20. Pigsy In Space | | 21. Monkey Bee | | 22. Disappearing Volcano |
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Amazon.co.uk Review
You could never accuse Damon Albarn of resting on his laurels. Whether it's forming supergroups (The Good, The Bad & The Queen), working with cult animators (The Gorillaz) or making music with musicians from Mali, the former Blur frontman has nurtured a restless, questing spirit not normally encountered in Britop stars. As if to underline his diverse interests, he now turns his attention to Chinese theatre. Monkey: Journey to the West is a theatrical collaboration between Albarn (music), Jamie Hewlett of Gorillaz fame (designs, costumes) and Chinese opera specialist Chen Shi-Zheng. The show itself is an explosive 90-minute circus featuring Chinese acrobats, martial arts experts and contortionists, though the album condenses the experience into 22 songs lasting an hour or so. Recorded in London and Beijing with a mix of European and Chinese musicians, Monkey ... is a genuine attempt at East-West fusion. Featuring a dizzying array of instrumentation--rock guitars, electronics, harps, mandolins, drum machines, strings, plinky-plonk keyboards, giggling girls, chants, even pigs--it's the sort of project that could so easily have gone awry. Yet Albarn, who allegedly mastered the Chinese pentatonic scale, seems to have made it work. Songs like the fluttery "Heavenly Peach Banquet" and the wistful "The Living Sea" are utterly beguiling, and stand in stark contrast to guitar-heavy behemoths like "Battle in Heaven" and the climactic "Monkey Bee." These longer songs are punctuated with incidental pieces such as "Iron Rod", "Into the Eastern Sea" and "Out of the Eastern Sea". While such interludes may distract from a 'normal' album experience, there's enough melodious charm and imaginative whimsy scattered throughout to satisfy even ardent skeptics. --Paul Sullivan
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 Fascinating, 2009-04-25
Immediate and expressive, with some really beautiful vocal performances. Surprisingly, as the music is quite classical in style, my kids (9 and 5) absolutely love this album and play it to death. A brave, quirky and eclectic combination of sounds and musical styles.
 Quite interesting, incidentally ... (6/10), 2008-09-11
I have been a keen advoate of all things Damon Albarn post-Graham Coxon (i.e., Blur's `Think Tank` and beyond) so was understandably quite excited by the album release of `Monkey, Journey to the West`. I had not seen the Chinese opera-spectacular which this album scores but I didn't let that dissuade me from pre-ordering this one from Amazon. What I hadn't realised was that this 22-song collection largely comprises incidental compositions from the opera and doesn't stand up as an album in its own right. Unless you have seen the opera - in which case this might make a compelling souvenir - I feel duty-bound to warn you not to expect something on the scale of other Albarn side-projects such as Gorillaz' `Demon Days`, `Mali Music` or `The Good, the Bad and the Queen`.
There are handfull of lovely individual songs - particularly the Himalayan Kate Bushisms of `Heavenly Peach Blanket' - but the majority are sonic doodles of varying interest. Predominantly comprising synths and drum machines, fleshed out with guitar, harp and strings, some are diverting enough - even narrational - in their own right, but most score some unseen action intelligable only to those who have seen the production. The effect is sometimes frustratingly akin to being stuck in a theatre foyer ticketless while the action gets underway without you in the audience. And unlike a traditional opera, the music seems rather secondary - or at least only complementary to - the action on stage, rather than the other way around. As a souvenir, it's an attractive package, but I've never been a fan of Jamie Hewlett's artwork - Gorillaz for me was always just about the music.
 Listen to this properly!, 2008-11-30
Back ground music this is not! This album is full of extraordinary sounds and feelings that are powerful and strange. It is impossible to listen to this as background music, but if you enjoy music for the range of emotions and physical experiences it evokes you will love this album. Yes, there is the trademark Albarn waltz underlying "I love Buddha", and the more westernised tracks tend to be underpinned by thumping Gorillaz baselines, but this album is as strange and different as it should be. There is no English, but Mandarin, many of the instruments are strange, and the melodies are rooted in Chinese folk traditions. You will either find this album wierd and inaccessible, or utterly exhilerating. Deserves to be listened to properly and loudly!!
East meets West, 2009-05-26
Everyone who saw the two-minute animated ident for the BBC's Olympic coverage last year will have a pretty good idea what to expect from this soundtrack to Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's epic East meets West operetta. Bubbly synthesizers, sweet Chinese vocals and various kinds of Eastern instrumentation are supplemented by more familiar dance sensibilities. I was relieved to find that despite being removed from the context of the operetta, this collection of songs still worked for me.
As with Albarn's other recent project, The Good The Bad And The Queen, this ambitious collation may sound unworkable in practice, but actually makes for a fascinating if off-kilter delight.
The mixture veers widely from the pure Cantonese pop of tracks such as `The Dragon King', to electronica `Monkey Bee, `Monkey's World', and more unusual offerings such as `Iron Rod' and `Whisper'. We occasionally see glimpses of the more recognizable in tracks like `O Mi To Fu', but, surprisingly, some of the most successful creations here are the less ambitious but musically sound stuff like `The White Skeleton Demon' or ` Disappearing Volcano'.
Ultimately Albarn's latest offering represents a brave and mainly successful attempt to fuse East and West by pushing the boundaries of music; not content with being the face and the driving force of on of the 90s most successful and musically accomplished pop bands, Damon seems determined to move into as many disparate musical areas as he has time for, and on this showing I am fascinated to see what he will come up with next.
 Disappointing, 2008-11-17
I'd been really looking forward to this release, unfortunately I have to say it's the worst of Damon Albarn's career.
I was equally disappointed with the opera itself, which I saw last weekend. A few parts were very very good, but on the whole it's really dull.
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 0634904038823
Label: XL
Manufacturer: XL
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: XL
Release Date: 2008-08-18
Studio: XL |
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