Review: Monkey - Journey to the West

Monkey: Journey to the West

The album Monkey: Journey to the West, [XL, September 2008] is the sonic counterpart to a theatre creation of the same name produced by musician Damon Albarn, comic book artist Jamie Hewlett, and featuring the UK Chinese Ensemble. Albarn and Hewlett, working in their previously established model of the Gorillaz, retell the 16^th century Chinese tale of an existentially troubled monkey named Sun Wu Kong – “the monkey with the realization of emptiness” – who is hatched from a stone egg. The story is articulated through multiple mediums (product platforms is an uglier turn of phrase) and enacted by animated, anthropomorphosized primates.

Per the execution of many concept albums, one follows the protagonist aurally along his quest for enlightenment in a state of incomprehension. Listening to Journey to the West is an interpretive experience. One is occasioned by moments of insight – This bit? One thinks, In “Into the Eastern Sea?” with the bubbling and the scaling-upwards synths? This must be him diving into the water! And Maybe the jabbering at the end of “Iron Rod” is an encounter with some sort of supercilious, educatory being. Or, Perhaps the airy female vocals and penetratingly repetitive organ in “Heavenly Peach Banquet” indicate that our hero has fallen in love? It is emphatically a work of art attempting to communicate.

Though it’s a niggling nit to pick, there are certain points on the album where the limits of Albarn’s talent as an orchestral arranger poke through. This is bothersome to those of us who spent much time with his last multi-artist project – the murky and beautiful The Good, The Bad and the Queen, of which there are echoes. Albarn has a curious knack for reinterpreting martial marching music (“March of the Volunteers” and “March of the Iron Army”), but he is at his best on the weird-pop tracks that are more squarely within the bounds of his abilities as a producer, like the single “Monkey Bee.”

Some of the official online literature for Monkey: Journey to the West argues that in order to better understand today’s China, it may “be wiser to learn… about a little monkey than [it is to read] the conservative philosopher, Confucius.” There is the possibility that by introducing the public to this venerable and apparently influential legend, passed over for far too long by Western Intellectual Society, Albarn and Hewlett are doing us a massive favor that will be remembered for generations. Hard to say. The album is certainly fun.