Murdoc, 2-D, Russel and Noodle are back with Phase 2: Slow Boat To Hades. If you don't know these four animated musicians they are the members of Gorillaz.

Although the band may be fictional, their music is not. A perfect blend of hip hop, swing, electronica and rock'n'roll makes Gorillaz a great band to listen to. Their debut album Gorillaz did quite well and many people loved their hit single Clint Eastwood. Although not as well received, their follow up album Demon Days was also very inventive and fun to listen to. The band has now also released three DVDs, Phase One - Celebrity Takedown, Demon Days Live and this DVD, Phase Two Slow Boat to Hades.

Like the original DVD, this is hard to navigate between videos, videos in the making, cartoons, interviews, live performances and miscellaneous goodies. After a lot of effort, I was able to find a table of contents which listed all 41 items on this DVD. I will not be covering ALL 41 items, but read on for the more interesting tidbits included on this unique new DVD from Gorillaz.

THE VIDEOS

Gorillaz always has unique videos that feature its animated members, and with a new set of songs on Demon Days more videos are out. They are all present on this album.

Feel Good, Inc. I enjoy this song, in fact it is the ring tune that identifies when my son is calling me from his Motorola RAZR. 2D shouts out the lyrics on his bull horn, while Murdoc appears before a group of his adoring fans. The computer generated windmill appears when the songs infectious chorus is sung. Noodle plays her guitar on the edge of the floating island that the windmill sits. If you were ever a fan of the band YES, the windmill island looks like a 3D version of a Roger Dean painting. Dean did the unique artwork on albums like Fragile, Close to the Edge and Yessongs. If you recall the giant floating islands from the YES album covers, you will know what the giant floating island in the Gorillaz videos look like.

Dare is the next video and this one is filmed at the bands mountain top lair. Noodle opens her Japanese style doors where she has the latest in stereo equipment, a giant singing head. Surround sound filled my room as the young animated Japanese guitarist for Gorillaz began to dance about her room. The song has quite the beat to it, so its easy to dance along.

Dirty Harry is up next, presumably the follow up video to Clint Eastwood 2D guards a group of small animated children, and boogies down on a keyboard in the middle of the desert. The kids sing along. Noodle and Murdoc soon arrive driving a real military transport. The blend of animation and live action is seamless, and pretty cool.

El Manana is up next. This is another video on the Dean like floating island. Noodle is peacefully in meditation on her island until helicopters come for some unknown reason to shoot the flying island down.

Rock It is a bizarre video featuring all the band members walking through a strange alien world. Heads float about and an odd gargoyle sings. I didn't like this song as much, but the video is inventive anyway. blah blah blah blah blah

The next four videos are animatics of the first four videos. They give rough outline sketches of how the finished video should look.

The Swagga and Bill Murray both feature very little in the way of video. Swagga just shows the words of the title spelled in dots, and Bill Murray shows sound bursts.

Murdoc is God brings us back to the windmill again, now rotating against a back drop for a blood red sky. Trouble is, that nothing else happens.

Kids with Guns while being an infectious song, the video is also rather dull. Shillouettes of guns in black red and white appear rapidly across the screen, that's it.

People is an entertaining video, a talking head appears in the screen of a cell phone. He is soon joined by several cell phones floating around each with talking heads blabbing away. Hmmm, what is this song trying to say?

Samba at 13 brings us back to the mountain top lair of the band. The camera then pans and circles the building as the song plays using various posterized colors.

LIVE PERFORMANCES

The band has some live performances here as well. For Gorillaz, live means an odd mix of video screens with the animated band combined with real musicians. Songs done live include

Manchester Mash Up The band appears on screens with a variety of rappers and musicians on stage.

MTV Europe Music Awards The band appears via computerized 3 D models that appear on stage by some projection technique. They perform Feel Good, Inc.

Feel Up Live Same song, but just showing the animations.

Brit Awards 2006 performance featured the band on a huge stage performing Dare. A huge group of school kids did the chorus and a full string section performed with the band which appeared on a HUGE screen behind everything.

El Manana Live in Harlem The song El Manana, live! The band appears in 2D on a variety of huge video screens behind the live performers.

Brit Awards Rehearsals is just that.

Live in Harlem Sting This is a bizarre one in which Murdoc appears in a mountain field playing the piano wearing nothing but a hat.

I enjoyed the live performances, Each listed performance is only one song though.

Miscellaneous stuff

The rest of the DVD is filled with ADs, trailers and a few funny bits that I will leave Gorillaz fans to discover on their own.

CD ROM

A bonus CD Rom is also included that has some cool Gorillaz wallpaper and screen savers. It also had some games, but I haven't played them yet.

Summary I enjoyed most of the videos and the live performances, but the DVD includes too much filler stuff like ads for their other albums, ring tones and misc. stuff that wasn't that entertaining. Like Phase One, Phase Two gets 3 stars.

Related Reviews:

Gorillaz Phase One: Celebrity Takedown

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD