[Murdoc]
Well you know, after the American Tour which ended in March 2002, we sort of came back to England and wrote some new songs but y' know frankly we were cream crackered, y’ know, knackered. We played our last date together as a band at the Isle of MTV Show in Portugal around, when was it? June 2002… And that was it. And after that we just concentrated on trying to make this, sort of, turdy Gorillaz film.

[2-D]
Yeah, well we got so many offers to make the film in America, at the time it seemеd like a waste not to take thе opportunity.

[Murdoc]
Sooo, we all moved over to LA for a while, y' know, La La Land and err we sort of hired this big house out in the sort of, kind of like a Hollywood thing y' know, it was like up in the hills, y’ know. So that we could, y' know, sort of be right in the hub, y' know what I'm saying, in the hub of where we were sort of meant to be filming. I've gotta say, y' know man, there was a lot of shit distractions hehe, you know what I mean? Heheheh!

[Russel]
And the film negotiations were just endless.

[Murdoc]
Oh, man that was just, like, really, really tedious, y' know.

[Russel]
Yeah, we got caught up in rehearsals meeting the script approvals.

[Noodle]
The script was unfinished, the people writing it thought they were making a very insightful yet ironic comment on popular culture, err supposed to be non-linear government-esc animation, in which the four main protagonists, namely Gorillaz, fall randomly in and out of a number of surreal illustrations, but in fact, the scriptwriters were just like, erm, making it up, as they went along.

[Murdoc]
Erm, will you wake us up when you're finished, Noodle?

[Russel]
I guess what she’s trying to say is they thought it was gonna be like modern version of the Monkees movie.
[Murdoc]
Yeah, yeah, thing is though the person they chose to play me looked like some old wrinkly geriatric, y’ know, it was really insulting. And he smelt, y'know what a pen and ink, y’ know. I think it might've been Robert Downey Senior. I mean, that guy must've been pushing 70 y' know.

[Russel]
Have you looked in the mirror recently?

[Murdoc]
Listen mate, I may be no spring chicken, but I don’t look that rough, do I? I mean, the wrinkles on my face are all laughter lines.

[Russel]
Nothing's that funny. Anyhow, the situation went downhill from there, no one was focused enough. 2-D couldn't understand the difference between film and reality, Murdoc got himself kicked out of the Playboy mansions for stealing ashtrays.

[Murdoc]
And Russel got a big fat ego and then changed his name to “R Diddy”

[Russel]
So eventually we decided to cut our losses and take time off to recuperate.

[Noodle]
This just lead to, further misadventure!

[Murdoc]
So, y' know man, y' know when we realised we were just sort of whistling in the wind, we decided to have a break from each other. So I headed down south to try my luck in Mehico, y' know, Mexico. But there was some sort of mix up, y' know, my finances and I kind of got accused of um…

[Russel]
Russel: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was found using counterfeit cheques in a Mexican brothel.
[Murdoc]
Hehe, yeah the Chicken Choker, wonderful place. Fantastic staff! Happy days hahaha!

[Russel]
Basically, he got passing dud cheques off as payment to the girls and consequently, Murdoc got taken to jail.

[Murdoc]
Yeah, yeah alright, Russel! Russel spent a long time trying to recuperate; he ended up living in Ike Turner's basement. Ike Turner! You went a wee bit mental, didn't you Russ?

[Russel]
Well, he certainly looked a lot like Ike Turner. I was working on an album of my own, but eventually it felt like the album was working on me. It was a snrang time. When you work in a band with people for such a long period and then that suddenly stops, it can leave you at a loss. I think I had some kind of breakdown. I had just lost one of my closest friends, Del, the spirit who used to live inside me and the strain was starting to show. Hmm. Every song I tried to record would become a hallucination, then the hallucination would try to write the song, which would then get up and become…

[Murdoc]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Russel man, it's probably (he tries to calm Russel down) take it easy, man, take it easy, have a salad.

[Russel]
Ok.

[Murdoc]
It's probably best, y' know, not to dig too deep on this one. Dark place, man, dark place. So anyway, after 18 months in this sort of Tirana jail, I thought, enough is enough and err, (adopts Mexican accent) with a leedle help from ma friends…I got myself, sort of out and back home to Blighty, the good old Uifikay. But I tell you, that's enough South America for me for a while. Prison food is rubbish! I don't think I could eat another burrito in my life.

[2-D]
Yeah, but you still like a bit of Mexican sausage ay Muds

[Murdoc]
Shut up you little fu… (composes himself) By the time I got back, Noodle had also returned from her trip to her Japanese homeland and was already in the process of recording the new album or at least, you know, laying down a lot of the groundwork.
[Noodle]
Yes, uh, I had been Japan for about a year, uh, researching my past as it had always been a mystery to me. Uh, it was during this period that I was awoken from my extended amnesia and in doing so, I discovered many interesting facts about myself. Uh, one of which is that I knew English language fluently. Having been revitalised, I returned to England and I began to lay foundation for a new Gorillaz album, however, Kong Studios, where we live and record had been lying dormant and empty during our absence.

[Murdoc]
Ah, yeah, you know it's hard to get good staff to clean a haunted studio.

[Noodle]
Yes, no one had maintained the building and it has also been broken into. There seemed to be a plague of the walking undead infesting the building. Corpses lined the corridors.

[Murdoc]
So once we were back, it took a little while to get into the swing of things. I mean it can be very distracting when you've got six or seven decomposing zombies stuck up your chimney flue y' know.

[2-D]
We got chimney flues?

[Murdoc]
I'm speaking metaphorically, D. I'm using the analogy of a chimney flue to describe the erm, passageways of our flowing creativity. The zombies in this case are used as a metaphor, as in blockages to the airways, figuratively speaking.

[2-D]
Really?

[Murdoc]
No. There really are about six or seven undead carcasses stuck up the studio chimney.

[2-D]
That'd explain the smell wouldn't it yeah