Gorillaz New Album 'The Mountain' Climbs Into India’s Sound and Spirit

Gorillaz are returning with their ninth studio album, The Mountain, set for release on 20 March 2026. Recorded across Mumbai, New Delhi, Rajasthan, and Varanasi, the project leans deeply into India’s musical and cultural landscape.

The tracklist spans 15 songs, featuring collaborations with legends and luminaries alike: Asha Bhosle, Anoushka Shankar, sarod maestros Amaan Ali and Ayaan Ali Bangash, and flautist Ajay Prasanna. The visual world matches the sound, with Jamie Hewlett’s artwork layering Gorillaz’s iconic characters against hand-drawn scenes and the album title rendered in Devanagari script.

The Tracklist:

The Mountain — Dennis Hopper, Ajay Prasanna, Anoushka Shankar, Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash

The Moon Cave — Asha Puthli, Bobby Womack, Dave Jolicoeur, Jalen Ngonda and Black Thought

The Happy Dictator — Sparks

The Hardest Thing — Tony Allen

Orange County — Bizarrap, Kara Jackson and Anoushka Shankar

The God of Lying — IDLES

The Empty Dream Machine — Black Thought, Johnny Marr and Anoushka Shankar

The Manifesto — Trueno and Proof

The Plastic Guru — Johnny Marr and Anoushka Shankar

Delirium — Mark E. Smith

Damascus — Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bey

The Shadowy Light — Asha Bhosle, Gruff Rhys, Ajay Prasanna, Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash

Casablanca — Paul Simonon and Johnny Marr

The Sweet Prince — Ajay Prasanna, Johnny Marr and Anoushka Shankar

The Sad God — Black Thought, Ajay Prasanna and Anoushka Shankar

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett revealed that both had lost close family members before travelling to India. Against that backdrop, The Mountain emerges as a meditation on grief, mortality and what lies beyond.

Framed through the band’s cartoon alter-egos, the record is intended as a fully immersive work, its songs designed to be experienced in sequence. Hewlett explained that the aim was to revive the practice of sitting with an album in its entirety, rather than dipping in and out in today’s culture of endless scrolling.

Since their inception, Gorillaz have blurred the line between band and mythology, weaving story arcs around animated avatars Murdoc, 2D, Noodle and Russel. Each release adds another layer, both sonically and narratively. With The Mountain, the fusion of Indian classical elements and contemporary Gorillaz textures suggests a chapter that is ambitious and expansive. 

For a band defined by reinvention, this feels like both a fresh ascent and a continuation of their ever-unfolding saga.