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Description

Gorillaz were, from the very beginning, as much conceptual art as they were a musical group. A collaboration between Albarn and visual artist Jaimie Hewlett, the project was conceived as a “virtual band” that could comment on the empty and manufactured nature of popular culture. They quickly expanded into videos, books, comics, and games which detailed a complex and surreal mythology and engaged with a variety of social and political issues. But Plastic Beach took this to a new level.

Damon Albarn's encounter with plastic pollution at Hallsands Beach inspired the album's meditations on the Anthropocene – an epoch marked by significant human impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems. The book positions Plastic Beach as a concept album that reflects on the Anthropocene, combining commentary on environmental degradation and consumer culture with attempts to imagine a future beyond the rapacity and destructiveness of this era.

Table of Contents

1. Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach
2. Of Cli-Fi and Concept Albums
3. Utopia, Dystopia, Apocalypse
4. “Some Kind of Nature”: Authenticity and Simulacra in the Age of the Anthropocene
5. Mourning and Melancholia
6. Towards a Music of the Anthropocene

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published 03 Sep 2026
Format Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition 1st
Extent 152
ISBN 9798765132869
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Series 33 1/3
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Ihor Junyk

Ihor Junyk is Professor of Cultural Studies and En…

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