Please forgive me. I know that I just discussed another track from the fantabulous new Gorillaz album Plastic Beach (yes, that’s right folks, I’m even beginning to punctuate album titles correctly) ridiculously recently, but pretty much immediately after that post was published, I realized that there was another track on the album that I loved so much more. And in case you hadn’t guessed by the title of the post, I’m talking about “Empire Ants” featuring Little Dragon, although the star is definitely lead singer Yukimi Nagano (pictured above).

The track starts out completely unsuspectingly with a slower section sung by Gorillaz main man Damon Albarn. I like how even these slower parts of the album always seem to have a good beat. The beat is layered over with some flowing piano and guitar noodling, and it’s all nice and well. But you can just feel it in the air that something else is coming. And then about halfway through, it happens. An electronic riff comes in from outer space, and then it just drops hard. It’s still super chill, but the beat is heavier and the music more electronic and less organic. And then we are treated to the beautiful voice of Nagano, who I’m convinced is quite possibly the best musical cameo. It’s almost as if her voice was created to sing on this track. It fits so perfectly with the music to take the listener even further into the trance created by the rest of the track.

I believe I read that she is part of the rehearsal tour going on right now in the UK, which gives me great hope that she will be one of the many musical guests anticipated to be part of the Gorillaz live performance at Coachella, which means we will likely be hearing this song live under the stars in Southern California. And that, my friends, is going to RULE.

Again, I don’t really like to do “repeats” of the same artist so close together, but the fact that I’ve essentially had this song on repeat for the last week told me that I could make an exception this time.

Gorillaz – Empire Ants (feat. Little Dragon)

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