Gorillaz & Little Dragon – Empire Ants
0:00 – Song 2-D.
“The sun has come to hold you.” Trudging acoustic lines press against the ticking delight of drum machine snare; it’s the sound of midnight air. Playful delicate taunts of piano lines skipping around the nucleus of flame drenched sound in stealth ninja suits. “The whole world is crashing down on you.” It will arrest you with longing-for melodies and then…
2:14 – Song Yukimi Nagano.
When I was seven years old I bought a Rubik’s cube. It took seven weeks to save up for through the not too admirable practice of collecting stolen pennies and an altogether flawed changeover of cash from the church tray: in one penny and out one pound. Still, I got to where I needed to be, alone in my room with my colourful cube. It was too big for one hand to handle, too colourful to avoid squinting and too complex for my mind to fathom, but it was here. It was glorious. At night I hid it in a potted plant – parental detection would be avoided – but one of these nights my mother watered the plant, the water soaked through the soil, wrapped around the cube and my cube, as I slept, grew.
There are still indents along the wall where the cube fell against. Each square I could climb into, if I had the nerve to squeeze out from the safety that was laying underneath my bed. Sometimes I’d peek, but mostly I listened. My room sized Rubik’s cube on crack with its twisting and twirling shapes. Every square revolving with colours my young eyes had not yet seen; colours I have yet to see again. Pellets of booming bass gushing through its plastic pours. Torrents of sound hitting and bouncing against every twist and turn my ear had to offer. And there was a voice, too. It was a girl – a voice of childlike transmission, but a knowing hook. This was as much as I could tell for certain. And I listened to her sing through this electrified pallet of colours – my overgrown Rubik’s cube. “My little dream working the machine.”
With my ear against the pulsing ground I felt her come to rest as the sound died and watched as my cube fell to the floor to fit in my hands once again. I rushed to the corner of the room and packed it back into the soil. In the bathroom I cupped my hands together as the tap emptied with water. Losing half of my cupped collection I emptied all I could onto the soil and then I waited.
[Buy Machine Dreams.]
Strange that you would offer a path to Little Dragon’s Machine Dream‘s Amazon page, but not Plastic Beach, which is where this song finds itself. Any particular reason?
Two writers to the song. One being Damon Albarn and the other Yukimi Nagano. She, Yukimi, makes my heart go a flutter. More money in her pocket with some Little Dragon sales – something which I may just contribute to this weekend. The world has just purchased Plastic Beach. I don’t think Damon would be too angry at me for this.
Great collaboration by these artists, Yukimi’s soothing voice fits perfectly with the Far East-ish melody set up by Albarn and his boys.
One of my favourite songs on the Plastic Beach album, alongside Superfast Jellyfish, Style, White Flag and On Melancholy Hill.