The Now Now
Gorillaz premiered ’The Now Now’ with a live session at Boiler Room Tokyo, and it felt like one of those moments where the marketing was actually connected to what the album was about. The new record had City Pop all over it—that glossy, introspective 80s Tokyo sound that had come back as something cool again—and going to Tokyo to play it made sense.
They had the whole album there, ’Hollywood’ and ’Humility’ and ’Magic City,’ and it worked in that room. There was a restraint to it that matched what the album itself was doing. After ’Humanz’ came out so bloated and overstuffed, this one was quieter, smaller, more interested in mood and texture and surface.
The stream was only available for 24 hours, which was very 2018 in the way it tried to create urgency. I watched it later on video, which is probably how most people experienced it anyway. The low resolution and compression made Tokyo look even further away, like watching through something. City Pop is what it sounds like—Tokyo as a feeling, mood over meaning, surfaces you can disappear into.
The whole thing proved its own logic. Make something urgent and time-limited and now it exists forever, equally available to everyone, the urgency totally destroyed. The culture eats itself and keeps walking.