Thanks to wyldelf and adammaker, I discovered that Monkey is available NOW on iTunes!
You get the whole album, plus a nifty PDF booklet with translations of the lyrics (the cover of which is the image above).
Woot!
Monkey, again….
Monkey!
The opera Monkey: Journey to the West, by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (of Gorillaz fame), is being released as an album on August 18th. (I wrote about this in my journal last summer when it debuted at the Manchester arts festival, now it’s playing at the Royal Opera House in London.)
From the BBC News site:
The tracks are basically traditional sounding Chinese songs with Gorillaz-style beats and production.
Albarn said: “I’ve tried to make the record something different from the show that was on the Royal Opera House. I didn’t want it to be a series of segments or songs but rather one long listen.”
Like the show, the songs on the album have all been recorded in Mandarin.
I am SO getting this.
EDIT: The BBC advert for the Olympics uses a track from Monkey, and animation from Hewlett: