Song Machine announcement

On 29 January 2020 the band announced its new project Song Machine . Eschewing the typical album format of releasing music, Song Machine is instead a web series that sees the band releasing one new song a month as “episodes” to the series, with 11 episodes released to comprise the first “season”. Elaborating on the idea behind Song Machine in a radio interview shortly after the announcement of the project, Albarn explained that “We no longer kind of see ourselves as constrained to making albums. We can now make episodes and seasons.” Each episode features previously unannounced guest musicians on new Gorillaz material, with the first being ” Momentary Bliss “, which was released on 31 January and features both the British rapper Slowthai and the Kent -based punk-rock duo Slaves . Upon the premiere of “Momentary Bliss”, Albarn revealed that the group had been in the studio with Schoolboy Q and Sampa the Great among others, although he did say that these songs were likely to be saved for future episodes of Song Machine . The group also teased a possible collaboration with the Australian band Tame Impala on Instagram .