Gorillaz should be a sensation. The virtual cartoon band. The myth. The big songs. The strange universe. The whole package. Instead, there I was at Roskilde, watching Damon Albarn wander around with his megaphone and thinking: is this still Gorillaz, or has someone just handed a British polymath Orange Stage as a summer house?
One star
Two stars
Three stars
Four stars
Five stars
Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
Damon Albarn again.
I don’t know whether the man has by now bought a summer house in Roskilde, got a key fob for backstage, and queues for breakfast with his own mug. But he turns up at the festival with a regularity that now feels less like a booking and more like a municipal service.
This time it was with Gorillaz. Or something that looked like Gorillaz. Or Damon Albarn and Friends: Cartoon Edition. It was a little hard to tell.
Because Gorillaz ought to be a sensation. That’s the whole point. When the project first landed in the world, it was weird in exactly the right way. A virtual band, a pop-cultural hallucination, four animated figures and Damon Albarn’s restless brain behind the curtain. When they played Roskilde for the first time, it felt almost untested. As if someone had decided to turn MTV, Britpop, hip-hop, dub, comic books and existential hangover songs into one living machine.
18 years later, it was still weird.
Just not in the good way.
The concert began with the expectation that the universe would open up. That you’d be pulled into that special Gorillaz zone, where it is at once cartoon, concert, pop show and collective confusion. But instead the evening felt more like a loose collection of hugely talented musicians, guests and ideas that had forgotten to agree on who was actually in charge of the room.
Albarn was the centre, of course. He always is, even when he has technically invented a band whose main characters should be cartoons. But this time he seemed less like a conductor and more like a diva. At one point he complained about another concert audible from the stage. Fair enough, festival sound is chaos. But there is something impressively uncharming about standing at Roskilde and seeming offended that Roskilde sounds like Roskilde.
The most telling moment came when one song had to be stopped because one of the rappers from De La Soul was asked to repeat his verse. Albarn had lost his cue. It happens. Of course it happens. But right there, the whole concert’s problem was condensed into one small scene. This was supposed to be a precise machine. Instead it was stuttering like an old iPod with a low battery.
And yes, there were moments. It would be a lie to say otherwise. The biggest songs can still do something. The crowd sang along when recognition hit. There are still melodies in the Gorillaz catalogue so strong they can almost drag a concert uphill on their own. Almost.
But spellbound? No. The audience wasn’t. There was that strange festival restlessness in the air around the stage all evening. People looked around. Talked. Waited. Sang a little. Maybe checked what they were missing elsewhere. It didn’t feel like an audience trapped inside a universe. It felt like an audience standing there watching an expensive screensaver with a live band.
The basic problem may be that Gorillaz in 2026 no longer feels like a band, but like a platform. A format where Damon Albarn can place guests, songs and moods without it necessarily becoming something coherent. And that is a challenge when the main character is, in principle, a cartoon figure, but the man on stage behaves as if it is all about his own mood that day.
There is no doubt that Damon Albarn is a musical polymath. He has proved it. Again and again. Blur, Gorillaz, solo projects, collaborations, operating, African music projects, all sorts of things. We get it. The man can music. The man can ideas. The man can probably also build a rather interesting bookshelf.
But Roskilde Festival may not need to call him first next time a big night needs booking. Not because he can’t deliver. But because this felt like an artist who had already been here too many times, with a project that no longer seemed entirely sure why it had come.
Reflection:
Gorillaz should have been weird, huge and seductive. Instead it became messy, self-absorbed and surprisingly empty. Like watching a brilliant idea walk around the stage looking for its own password.
