This is the Damon Albarn score for an opera based on a popular Chinese folk tale. The Blur frontman combines Asian Pop, Prog Rock and whacky skits reminiscent of New Wave pranksters The Residents.
Some scores take on a live of their own away from the stage or the cinema. ‘Monkey’, I’m afraid, doesn’t quite pull it off. You are left with a compilation of Asian-styled Pop songs erratically shot through with ambient instrumentals and sound collages.
A ‘Rock Opera’ it certainly ain’t - Don’t expect a new ‘Tommy’ or ‘Another Brick In The Wall’. Neither is it an autonomous piece of contemporary music.
At it’s playful best, Albarn’s score captures the absurd humour of ‘Eskimo’, the 1979 score for an imaginary play about life on the Polar circle by San Francisco art rockers The Residents. ‘I Love Buddha’, ‘The Dragon King’ and ‘Confessions Of A Pig’ fall into this category. But where ‘Eskimo’ is a cohesive work, ‘Monkey’ fails to integrate the absurd and the three pieces stick out rather awkwardly.
The backbone of the score are Prog Rock (’Monkey’s World’), Ambient (’Whisper’) and 1970’s Kung Fu movie style instrumentals (’Battle Into Heaven’, ‘Sandy The River Demon’).
The Sino Pop of ‘Heavenly Peach Banquet’, ‘Monkey Bee’ and ‘Living Sea’ easily provides the strongest moments on the album. ‘Monkey Bee’ in particular is quite interesting, adding cold choral touches of minimal composer Philipp Glass to a quirky pop tune.
The opera ‘Monkey: Journey To The West’ was first performed at the Manchester International Festival in June 2007. The score is too mixed a bag to work for me as an album. A DVD capturing the stage performance might make more sense.
Listen Here to ‘Journey To The West’ and download the album from iTunes. Just pay the regular iTunes Store price - We don’t charge any extras!
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