Being the extraordinary tale of a pop sensation whose principal interests are zombies and horror films, with a line-up comprising of a green toothed satanist, a 10 year-old guitar genius, a black-eyed sweetheart nihilist and a large cute drummer whose body acts as a host for his dead rapper mate, it's reasonably fair to say that Gorillaz offer the kids something a little more thrilling than five blokes crooning on stools or holiday camp formation grinnery.
It's also a Craig David-style outrage, that after blowing several million minds with their performance at the Brits, 2D, Murdoc, Russel and Noodle left the building empty-handed.
Not strictly a new album, 'G Sides' is more a collection of B-sides and mixes for the Japanese market - they do singles differently over there - made available over here. Alongside the radio edits and hit mixes of '19-2000', 'Clint Eastwood', and 'Rock The House' (with bonus videos of the latter two), 'G Sides' throws up a dizzying range of styles from scratchy punked up Human League ('Ghost Train'), speaker-fugging John Carpenter Casio ('Faust') to PiL-esque undead dub ('Dracula') or a spooksome flesh-eating chill ('Hip Albatross').
Pick of the bunch is the looped bluesin' of '12D3', and 'The Sounder' with Phi Life Cypher giving Del a run for his money over murder-mystery funk. Only 'Left Hand Suzuki Method' is a bit too Grand Royal arse for comfort - even for a bunch of cartoons.
Whilst any fan will probably have all these tracks already, 'G Sides' acts as a nifty companion piece to the album and looks ace too. So until the fully poseable action figures...
