As we are about to hit the Chinese new year at speed with little regard for stuff, it’s about time I looked at the Albarn/Hewlett (yes another one) collaboration, ‘Journey To The West’. Let me just state first off that the skirling pentatonic electronic interlude sting used heavily during the 2008 Olympics has nothing to do with this album and does not feature at all (which I was a bit gutted about), but apart from that there is a lot of good stuff here that goes beyond the rosey tinted nostalgia experienced by chaps of a certain age who got sexually confused by Tripitaka at a crucial moment in their development.
But the fighting, flying, theme tune and casual abuse of anthropomorphic pigs were cool.
As this is based on the opera premiered at the Manchester International Festival in 2007, this is essentially musical theatre… no, don’t turn off. The lyrics are based on ancient texts, not some original idea by Richard Stillgoe, the language is mandarin so you don’t have to deal with trite rhyming couplets… unless you speak Mandarin and the music is… interesting. There is a story too, which will be familiar to anyone who watched that programme, but a quick wander around Wiki and the like will bring you up to speed if you didn’t… it’s not that important though because it has the chops in the music department.
Fusing east and west blah blah blah… you know the drill. Pretty lazy statement and so so obvious. It is best to look at this as music, just music, as opposed to any kind of ethnicated fusion. There are a lot of styles here though. From the wild joy of ‘Monkey’s World’ that throws lo-fi Buggles vocals into a Gorillaz groove through the bombastic pomp of ‘The Dragon King’ to the delicate pop of ‘Heavenly Peach Banquet’, the music twists and dodges like a cloud borne sideburned god of mischief – regardless of whether you are following the story, you are drawn into the spirit of the tale regardless. By the time you reach the interval (just after ‘Tripitaka’s Curse’), you are enchanted by the cyber-antiquity of the score.
Like a lot of musical theatre, it does take a bit of a dip at this point. Though the waltzing minimalism of ‘A Pig’s Confession’ is funny at first, it wearies and ‘Sandy the River Demon’ is very dour. But it picks up, and the martial splendour of ‘March of The Iron Army’, the suspenseful humour of ‘Pigsy in Space’ and the surreal conclusion of ‘Monkey Bee’ bring the whole shebang to a satisfying climax.
Okay, I’ve over simplified, but it’s an enchanting piece of work, and no mistake. There are all these little touches and turns that decorate and embellish – the lyrics chattered monkey like, the chanting of old men to rooster accompaniment, the huge array of instruments – it’s cheerful, fun, not so experimental that you can’t listen to it with pleasure but not so low brow that you have to listen to it prone. And Damon doesn’t sing on it, so it doesn’t go all mockney either. Monkey, not mockney. Haha! A prosperous year of the Ox!
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