Have you ever had a big night out, only to realise you left your wallet in the back seat of your Uber when you wake up the next morning? It’s alright, we’ve all been there, but could you imagine if it was something much bigger like, say, the next Gorillaz album? Well this was exactly the situation that Damon Albarn found himself in recently.
Back in December, we reported how Gorillaz are looking at releasing a new album this year, with Jamie Hewlett admitting the band don’t want to get into a habit of entering a period of inactivity between records.
“So we’re going straight into the album with no break,” Hewlett admitted. “Usually we have a good five-year break between each album but we decided: ‘You know what? Let’s keep going’ because there’s ideas for a few more albums so we’re going to go straight into that. That will be all of [2017] and probably the year beyond that.”
Now, as The Mirror reports, Gorillaz are looking at releasing that new album as soon as next month. However, it was almost all in jeopardy after frontman Damon Albarn reportedly left a laptop containing the masters of the new album in a London taxi while he went out drinking.
“It was a disaster,” explained an unnamed source. “Damon oversees everything and, with Gorillaz, it’s not just audio – it’s the expensive visuals as well. The laptop’s contents are priceless.”
“But after a night at Groucho, Damon accidentally left it in a cab and caused a huge panic,” they continued. “It’s a really personal project because the album is very politically charged. A lot of his opinions on Brexit filter through it.”
Thankfully though, after a few hours of worry, the taxi driver in question managed to return the laptop to its rightful owner. “It was a massive relief for everyone involved in the project,” the source said.
While it remains to be seen whether or not Gorillaz will be releasing the follow-up to 2017’s Humanz next month (and whether or not it contains that Flume collab we’ve heard so much about), we can only thank our lucky stars that Damon Albarn scored himself an honest taxi driver that night.
Check out Gorillaz’ latest single, ‘Andromeda (DRAM Special)’:
