Mojo - The Music Magazine

Monkey
Journey To The West
(XL)

THERE ARE THOSE who would be overjoyed to see Damon Albarn end up with egg on his face over Monkey. This is not so much the fault of Monkey. The same people would be sneakily praying for Damon to come a cropper whatever he did – if that were a choral requiem for Tuvan throat singers or something as meekly orthodox as reforming Blur.

The unpleasant subtext is not the kneejerk Albarn-bashing (after all, he brings some of this on himself) but the idea that there is something inherently pretentious – rather than sensibly cosmopolitan – about an interest in the music of other countries or cultures. Journey To The West is a collection of music composed for an “opera”, featuring Chinese actor-singers singing entirely in Mandarin, commissioned for the Manchester International Festival in 2007 and subsequently performed in Paris, Charleston and London. But exactly how daunting a prospect this need be considered is moot.

One: it’s not as if Monkey’s target audience have never trooped into a Chinese martial arts movie (even Nuts readers have seen one of those) or bought a world music record. Two: the story – uppity monkey-god, imprisoned by Buddha, seeks redemption by joining boy-priest’s quest to recover sacred texts – is as ingrained, via the BBC’s early-’80s screening of the Japanese-made TV series, in the hearts and minds of Brits of-a-vintage as are The Wombles.

Granted, calling the thing an “opera” sets the snob alarm a-clanging. Yet, in its onstage form, Monkey observes few of the formal conventions (as far as I can make out) of either Chinese or Western opera. There are no arias as such. The onstage action is comic and acrobatic rather than arcanely dramatic. Jamie Hewlett’s costume design and animations are typically cheeky (and more faithful to the TV Monkey than they are to 16th Century folk-myth). Not just the story, but the look, characterisation and the frequent bouts of, well, fighting, make it a very modern, very pop-cultural fusion. It’s certainly a lot more fun than any opera I’ve ever been to.

So what about the record? Well it is, for good or ill, no substitute for seeing the thing. Neither is it, strictly speaking, a soundtrack, since this is 50 minutes of music as opposed to 110, and is much more the fusion of ancient-and-modern that Albarn claims to have originally intended than the opera’s reliance on a conventional pit orchestra would allow. Having said that – and in spite of the noises coming out of the Albarn camp to the contrary (one suspects they’d like to sell some copies of Monkey, and the more they make it sound like a Gorillaz side-project, the better) – I can confirm that, drum machines aside, it’s pretty much the same animal.

This means plenty in the way of gruff chanting (those are the male voices) and unearthly ululation (the female ones), which one imagines to be Chinese conventions observed by Albarn (he certainly claims to have spent hard yards “getting inside” Chinese music’s alien harmony-world). Otherwise, it is so utterly Damon-esque that it would be hard to imagine anyone with ears judging otherwise. The doomy lope of familiar Gorillaz rhythms holds sway; lovely melancholy themes rise and fall as they do throughout the Albarn oeuvre; there’s even the odd melodic snatch clearly reminiscent of The Good, The Bad & The Queen, the project Albarn was touring while writing the music for Monkey.

Since it’s at the narrative’s beck and call, you’d expect some of it to be fragmentary, and you’d expect correctly. But, while there are slightly fewer “set-pieces” than you’d demand from a Gorillaz record (say), what there are are stunning. Heavenly Peach Banquet is “the single”, an irresistible pop melody, like a Mandarin girl-group surrounded by harps, laughing chatter and Chinese strings. The haunting, staccato Confessions Of A Pig is a reminder that Albarn’s soundtrack apprenticeship was under the king of pop-classical minimalism, Michael Nyman (on the excellent Ravenous OST). Then there’s the penultimate Monkey Bee – the second-longest track at 5:02 – and also the most satisfying, building from a vocal “round” into a Gorillaz-y electro-swagger into a catharsis of Western rock distortion. It accompanies a scene where Monkey turns himself into a bee and flies inside… but hey, there are rumours the show will return to London in November, and I won’t spoil it for you.

Albarn’s revelation, from the middle of last year, that he was basing his compositions on a number system derived from the five points of the Chinese communist star, appears, from this vantage, to have been unnecessarily obfuscatory. His Monkey music is far more intelligible, instinctive, fascinating and enjoyable than he’s made it sound. His music-theatre background (Brecht and Weill are perhaps bigger influences than Dammers and Davies) puts him on firm footing here. In a funny way, he’s more comfortable – attractive, even – telling a story than he is presenting Damon Albarn.

Haters be warned: that egg/phizzog interface is on indefinite hold.

Danny Eccleston

Journey To The West by Monkey is released on August 18.

You can read Pat Gilbert’s review in the next MOJO magazine, out September 1.