GO APE FOR GORILLAZ Gorillaz are a truely unique and revolutionary band. It's members are officially cartoon characters. Gorillaz incorporates the talents of a number of modern-music luminaries, as well as the visual skills of Jamie Hewlett, creator of the animated character Tank Girl. Hewlett is a close friend and former flatmate of Damon, who has just been on a year's sabbatical from Blur.

Says Damon "Everything seems so manufactured these days, even the supposed tradition I come from, Indie, even that's manufactured now, so we just felt 'Let's play everyone at their own game and make something better that's manufactured, that's actually good'". The band are masterminded by a sinister 34-year-old bassist from England called Murdoc, who bears a strong physical resemblance to Frankenstein's monster. The line-up includes a 10-year-old Japanese female guitar virtuoso who arrived on the group's doorstep in an anonymously posted Fed-Ex crate, and an outsize African-American drummer possessed by the mischievous spirits of a posse of deceased rappers. The frontman is a brain-dead pretty boy known as 2D, perhaps on account of his lack of depth. The rest of them are no more multi-dimensional. Unusually camera-shy for a bunch of aspiring pop stars, Gorillaz have only ever been seen in illustrated form, even at a live gig at London's Scala the band were seen only as shadows playing behind a white screen.

Outside of the cartoon realm, Gorillaz are made up of Damon Albarn, Dan the Automator, Del the Funky Homosapien, Kid Koala and a host of other guest contributers. Dan "The Automator" Nakamura approaches the nature of the band slyly, while elaborating elusively on the myth. "Me and Damon found these kids called the Gorillaz," he said. "They're a DJ from France, a beat guy from Japan and a singer from New York … Well, it's kind of like this little collective that had some ideas … so they were like, 'Could you help us?' … So I ended up taking some of their little snippets and producing an album out of it."

The musical output of Gorillaz has so far totaled two Top 10 singles and a self-titled debut (curently awaiting a release date in th U.S.). www.gorillaz.com All images by Jamie Hewlett, copyright EMI Records.