Well this is somewhat fitting. The musical band Gorillaz announced that their next album, which is scheduled to launch before 2011, will be created exclusively with an iPad. Created by Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn, who also happens to be the lead songwriter and frontman for Blur, the Gorillaz burst onto the scene in 2001 with their first single Clint Eastwood.
Always looking to spice things up, Albarn told NME that the band has been working on a follow up to this year’s Plastic Beach while on tour.
“I’ve made it on an iPad,” Albarn explained, “I hope I’ll be making the first record on an iPad – which is ironic, being the sort of technophobe and Luddite that I am. I fell in love with my iPad as soon as I got it, so I’ve made a completely different kind of record.”
And what can fans expect to hear on the band’s forthcoming album? Albarn notes that it will have more of an American sound, like “an English voice that has been put through a vocoder of America.”
Albarn is hoping to release the album before Christmas so we hopefully won’t have to wait to long to see what kind of musical magic a talented song writer can create using solely an iPad. In a certain way, it’s almost fitting that the first major iPad-created album is coming from the Gorillaz. For many years, the background music playing at Apple special events in the minutes before Steve Jobs’ keynote would begin was always “Feel Good Inc” by the Gorillaz.
While critics are quick to dismiss the iPad as solely a consumption device, the creative endeavors sprouting forth from the iPad is a quick reminder never to underestimate the talent and wherewithall of creative types. To wit, in the videos after the break, classical pianist Lang Lang plays a rousing and impressive rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee using an iPad while the St. Lawrence String Quartet performs “Cannon in D” using a new Magic Fiddle iPad app from Smule.
For months, or perhaps years, folks have been using iPhone apps to create music and cover popular songs. The much larger iPad, however, gives users a lot more options within certain apps to really let loose and explore musical creation that by comparison is somewhat limited on the iPhone’s small screen.
Sun, Nov 14, 2010
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