Jamie Hewlett: Last News

The Beatles is currently involved in an ongoing silent auction all in the name of charity. This month, The Art of Music event is taking place in London - and globally, online - where a collection of unique pieces are being auctioned off online for Teenage Cancer Trust. One of the prized pieces is a photo taken by Paul McCartney's wife of The Beatles on the steps of the iconic recording studio Abbey Road.

Banksy’s team in the process of creating an artwork has been captured.The moment was caught on camera by a local resident following the 2023 installation of ‘Valentines Day Mascara’ in Margate.

The Cure, Jessie Ware, Scissor Sisters and more will be featured on ‘War Child Presents Secret 7”.The charity initiative, which first launched in 2012, takes seven tracks by seven musicians and presses each one to seven inch vinyl 100 times, creating 700 records.The sleeves for each are then designed by 700 creatives, ranging from renowned artists to newcomers. All sleeves will then be available to purchase via auction after the exhibition.

EXCLUSIVE: Celebrated Oregon studio Laika has brought in new talent, hiring director Pete Candeland, along with Victor Maldonado & Alfredo Torres, the Annie Award-winning duo together known as Headless, to develop new animated features. The appointments are effective immediately, though there’s no word yet on what the projects are.

Damon Albarn has revealed that he is currently working on an opera, putting Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s ‘The Magic Flute Part II’ to music for the first time.Von Goethe started writing the libretto for a sequel to Mozart’s 1791 opera in the mid-1790s, which he then published in 1807. But it was never actually completed or set to music, a task Albarn has now taken on more than 200 years later.“I’m doing an opera at the moment, using Goethe’s fragment he wrote about ‘The Magic Flute Part II’, which is fascinating”, he explained on a new episode of the Broken Record podcast. “You’ve heard of Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’? Well, Goethe, who is a contemporary of Mozart, wrote ‘Part II’ of that – the sequel – but it never got put to music.

Gorillaz secure their second Official Number 1 album with Cracker Island today.

Last Friday, Gorillaz shared their eighth studio album Cracker Island. An album written as the animated band's co-founders continued production on a now-shelved animated film, Cracker Island saw Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett enlist a range of legends and modern stars like Stevie Nicks, Bad Bunny, Thundercat, and Beck.

Damon Albarn has revealed that after Gorillaz’ divisive Glastonbury headline set in 2010, Kate Bush phoned to tell him it was “one of the best shows she’d ever seen”.Last night (February 23), Albarn and visual artist Jamie Hewlett sat down for a Q+A session with comedian Alan Carr for Banquet Records, attended by NME.Taking to the stage at former-cinema-turned-nightclub Pryzm in Kingston, Albarn explained that “Glastonbury was very memorable because it was so different to any other performance that had been before us”.“We wanted to just be, and not do the normal schtick of ‘hello Glastonbury, how are you all feeling?’ We wanted to just do our thing,” he continued.Gorillaz were last-minute replacements for U2 who had to postpone their appearance after Bono injured his back. Albarn returned to the iconic festival with Gorillaz one year after topping the bill with Blur.“I realised halfway through the Gorillaz set that the audience had no idea who some of the guests that we were bring onstage were, because I wasn’t introducing them,” he said of the set that included the likes of Bobby Womack, Bootie Brown, De La Soul, Lou Reed, Happy Mondays‘ Shaun Ryder, The Fall‘s Mark E.

For about a year and some change, just prior to the release of Gorillaz‘s second album Demon Days, I was a frequent lurker on unofficial Gorillaz fansites and forums. The band’s self-titled 2001 debut had got its hooks in me years prior, and after buying just about every comic by Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett, I needed more. My anticipation for a new album was matched by a desire for a full-length animated movie — the Gorillaz skits “G Bites,” contained on the DVD Phase One: Celebrity Take Down, expanded on the absurdist humor and the neo-occult, ’70s horror-indebted style of the band — confirmed for me that a movie simply had to happen.

All Hip-Hop first reported.Jolicoeur’s official cause of death has not been announced — but the rap pioneer had been open about his struggles with congestive heart failure over the past few years. The veteran performer was with the group since it launched in Amityville, Long Island, circa 1988.

Gorillaz co-creator and animator Jamie Hewlett has announced a new art book called Phoo Action: Silver Jubilee.Hewlett, who founded the cartoon band along with Damon Albarn in 1998, will release the 368-page hardcover title in late November via Z2 Comics. It’s priced at £41.56, and is available to pre-order here.The book contains an oral history of Phoo Action, the TV pilot that was created by Hewlett and Mat Wakeham.

Gorillaz formed, saying that he had hoped to launch his own “cartoon band”.The reclusive singer-songwriter was the only constant member of Felt, who released 10 studio albums between 1982 and 1989. However, he doesn’t appear on the group’s penultimate LP ‘Train Above The City’ (1988).Lawrence went on to launch glam-rock-inspired outfit Denim (they dropped two albums in the 1990s) before forming Mozart Estate (fka Go-Kart Mozart) in ’99.Despite having never achieved commercial success, Lawrence counts Jarvis Cocker and Charlie Brooker as some of his famous fans (Demin bagged a support slot with Pulp in the mid-’90s).During a new interview with The Guardian, Lawrence spoke about Denim’s initial decision to not play gigs as he believed “live music was over” at that time.

Damon Albarn has never been the type of musician to get bogged in a creative rut.