With their Song Machine series, Gorillaz invite some of today’s popular artists to work with them on new music. Dropping last month, their record featured the likes of Aminé, Jpegmafia, and The Cure’s Robert Smith. The collection is littered with talent, and on Thursday, the group returned to share the video for their Beck-featuring track “The Valley Of The Pagans.”
Directed by Jamie Hewlett, their “Valley Of The Pagans” video sees Gorillaz travel through time and arrive in a post-apocalyptic version of LA. Over the course of several minutes, the group takes a Grand Theft Auto approach to driving, even leading the police on a high-speed chase throughout the city.
Ahead of their Beck collaboration, Gorillaz vocalist Damon Albarn revealed that they are working on an animated feature-length film about the band. “We signed contracts, we’ve begun scripts and stuff. Making an animated film that’s kind of abstract is quite a big risk for a movie studio because they’re very expensive,” he said in an interview with Bryce Segall on Radio.com’s New Arrivals show. “If you’re telling a slightly obtuse, weird story that only sometimes makes any sense, it’s quite difficult. That’s what we’ve discovered. But we will do it, we are doing it. I see a lot of people doing animated videos these days but I don’t think they really touch the quality of ours. We’re more in the world of Studio Ghibli.”
Watch Gorillaz and Beck in their “The Valley Of The Pagans” video above.
Song Machine, Season One: Strange Timez is out now via Parlophone/Atlantic. Get it here.
Gorillaz are a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.