Welcome to Plastic Beach! Located at Point Nemo 48 degrees south, 123 degrees west, this deserted island built on top of plastic waste was tar-glued together by Murdoc Niccals, bassist of Gorillaz. It’s the poster location for one of the most emblematic and notorious eras of Gorillaz lore (Phase 3 from 2009 to 2012), known for the legendary album of the same name and its intricate story. It’s my favourite album by this band like it is many other people’s: while its success within the fanbase was…questionable upon release, it’s one of those classics that every modern fan unanimously agrees defined what Gorillaz is.
Plastic Beach is a special location with a unique, striking design and visual identity, an essence that carries on to the music featured in the album.
Phase 3 was an auspicious era for Gorillaz, but at the same time, a very unfortunate one. After their massive success with Demon Days (even winning a Grammy with their single Feel Good Inc.), Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, creators of the band, had very ambitious projects that simply did not turn out how they’d planned in the end. The idea was massive and very promising: two studio albums and a plethora of music videos, as well as an additional record with leftover tracks, a second autobiography, and many other projects that the animated characters often alluded to in interviews at the time. When listening to these interviews and radio shows today, one notices that most of these projects were never brought to life at all and ended up being scrapped.
The reason behind this wasted potential was as simple as a lack of budget. The Stylo music video (often jokingly referred to as “the video that killed Gorillaz”, like the phase itself), turned out to be extremely expensive, just like the over two hundred recorded songs with collaborators, and the literal thirteen-foot scale model of the Plastic Beach island that was built for the album cover, teasers and other promotions. This phase resulted in a hiatus and a falling out from the band, with years without any news from them and a seven-year gap between albums, the last being The Fall (and it didn’t help that it wasn’t successful at all). However, with all this cancelled content came plenty of interesting lost media and obscure content that never quite made the cut, which are some of my absolute favourite things to research in my free time. So, while I lament the loss of so many songs and content, there is still a thrill that comes with wanting to ‘find’ more of it.
Plastic Beach is also absolutely fantastic lore-wise. Much like in every other phase, the characters got entirely new outfit designs and these happen to be some of my favourites; they’re sea-themed, with Murdoc and 2D dressed in captain and sailors’ garbs respectively (hinting at their roles in their story), as well as cool iterations of Noodle and Russel’s designs that are so memorable. Plastic Beach also introduced many new characters: Cyborg Noodle, the Boogieman, all the individual real collaborators that mingled with the fictional story, many side characters from the flash games, and also elaborated on the Black Clouds/Pirate Jets from El Mañana music video.
That is also a very important thing to mention: all the lore is interconnected, and what was so great about Plastic Beach was how it picked up on the cliffhanger from the previous phase and a worthwhile story out of it. For context, Phase 2 - Slowboat to Hades ended with El Mañana, a music video in which the band’s guitarist, Noodle, was shot at by helicopters with supposedly fake bullets and escaped in a parachute. On the 7th of March 2006, the video shoot took place, but what none of the bandmates but Murdoc knew was that it was all part of a shady plan schemed by the bassist himself to rid himself of Jimmy Manson, their A&R rep who wanted to kill the entire band. As seen in the music video, the floating island that was part of the visuals crashed down from the sky, with Noodle escaping in the aforementioned parachute, but she wasn’t found afterwards. Noodle’s disappearance was a serious shocker to the fans, and since they disbanded afterwards, no one knew up until Plastic Beach what had happened to the characters. In Phase 3, the helicopters were revealed to be the Black Clouds, a group of pirates and assassins that had unfinished business with Murdoc (he’d cheated them by selling them fake and broken weaponry).
Plastic Beach’s lore was so ambitious, it had three different endings! But that is something to be elaborated upon in its own category. To read more, check out “Story” for more ramblings about the lore, and “Music” for everything related to the actual tracks and technical aspects of the release rather than just the fictional storyline :D.
