Entertainment Gorillaz are back with their upcoming ninth album. Albarn and Hewlett tell us about how life, death and trips to India informed the new record As Gorillaz share details of their ninth studio album, The Mountain, co-founders Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett have exclusively told Rolling Stone UK about the record’s underlying themes of life, death and transition, and the inspiration they found making the album in India. The new album, which was played in full at their ‘mystery show’ at London’s Copper Box Arena last week, follows 2023’s Cracker Island, and will be the first on the band’s own new label, KONG. The record arrives on March 20, 2026 but the first taste arrives in ‘The Happy Dictator’, a collab with Sparks, which is out today. The group have also confirmed details of an arena tour of the UK and Ireland in Spring 2026, plus a one-off headline show at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Described as an “expansive sonic landscape” produced by Gorillaz, James Ford, Samuel Egglenton and Remi Kabaka Jr., plus Argentine producer Bizarrap, The Mountain follows the story of what happens when the animated band of Murdoc Niccals, Russel Hobbs, 2D and Noodle, relocate to Mumbai with the help of four fake passports. Whilst the animated band embark on a fictional journey, Albarn and Hewlett say that the album – recorded in locations such as London, Devon and various places in India – was particularly informed by their joint travels to the “gloriously technicolour” country, but also the personal loss they both experienced during that time. “It was all like, ‘This is fucking weird, there’s a reason why we’re here,’” Hewlett explains. “Losing our fathers, and losing my mother-in-law, and then being in India as an artist. Visually, if you’re an artist and you go to India and it doesn’t blow your mind, then you must be blind, you know? Everything is insane and rich and colourful and mad and tragic and beautiful. “Damon worked with a lot of fantastic Indian musicians. We just had the best time, and we were so inspired and excited by the experience.” Albarn explains that the accumulative effect of grief and sadness “had to play out,” but the pair found comfort in the attitudes towards death in Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism. Reflecting on his own background from a “fundamentally anglo-christian society” it was “very nice,” Albarn continues, “to be able, even on the periphery, to feel a bit of that in context of our own sadness.” Ultimately, the duo had one particular idea in mind for the new album: to make death cool. In our recent interview with Gorillaz to mark 25 years of the band, Hewlett discussed the enduring appeal of animated characters and avatars as a means of escapism from the gritty reality of the real world. In the context of The Mountain, the animated band are the perfect candidates to take this journey and to make the transition between life and death feel less scary and more optimistic. “They’re cartoon characters,” he says. “They can die and come back to life the next day, it’s fine. [It’s] almost like they’re gonna go first and give us an idea of what’s to come.” The album will be accompanied by a book of Hewlett’s distinctive hand drawn illustrations which capture Murdoc, Noodle, Russel and 2D’s journey in India working on the new album. “You’re supposed to listen to it from beginning to end,” Hewlett explains of the new album. “What we’re asking is, take the time to sit with your earphones and listen for however long the album is, and look at the artwork, and then just lose yourself in this story. Don’t cherry pick a song, listen to it all. We’re trying to bring back that idea of taking time to invest in something, instead of this culture of scrolling.” Albarn is like that with all his albums, he confesses, “but this one probably in particular. There’s a message. By the time you get to the last song, which is called ‘The Sad God’, God’s really sad and he’s giving you a list of all the things he’s given. That man’s fucked up.” As ever with Gorillaz, collaboration is front and centre on The Mountain and the tracklist features an extraordinary list of artists – with performances in five languages – from the likes of IDLES, Paul Simonon, Jalen Ngonda and Johnny Marr, to Ajay Prasanna, Omar Souleyman and Anoushka Shankar. The latter is the daughter of sitar virtuoso, Ravi Shankar, which presented something of a full circle moment to Albarn. “I probably listened to Ravi Shankar before I listened to The Beatles when I was a kid,” he says. His parents, his dad in particular, were huge fans of Indian classical and ragas, so “to have Anoushka Shankar on the record is not only a real privilege, but the connection with my dad and his love of Ravi Shankar is great.” But the album isn’t just about death, according to the pair, with a lot of underlying conversations centering around on what is happening in the world more generally today (“Without getting on a soapbox and preaching,” Hewlett clarifies). Songs like ‘The Happy Dictator’ (featuring experimental art-pop duo Sparks), the first single to be released from the album, are very much “staring the beast in the face,” Albarn says. The track “touches that sweet spot between making something that’s fun and also got some social, political clout to it,” he explains. “I’ve always loved it if you can get that kind of song up to a big festival field singing it. It feels quite powerful.” Elsewhere on the album, the multi-generational nature of Gorillaz is also addressed. It was “important to include all the people who died that we’ve known,” explains Albarn. As such, voices of departed collaborators from previous sessions have been woven into the narrative, including Bobby Womack, David Jolicoeur, Dennis Hopper, Mark E Smith, Proof and Tony Allen. “I wanted to bring them into the conversation so that the record carries everybody and the whole history of