It Looks Like The Gorillaz Demon Dayz Festival Is Coming To Chicago

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 12, 2017 3:39PM

Damon Albarn and Gorillaz in Chicago in 2010, photo by Jim Kopeny / Tankboy

Looks like print got the scoop ahead of digital, this time! In the latest issue of Q Magazine, a few eagle-eyed readers noticed something quite curious: Chicago was casually dropped as a second location for the Gorillaz Demon Dayz festival, a day of music built around the band to celebrate their return to the airways with Humanz, out April 28.

The band, led musically by Damon Albarn, and visually by artist—and Tank Girl creator—Jamie Hewlett has only grown in popularity since it went on indefinite hiatus in 2011. The group began as an Archies for the new millennium, a cartoon band led by Albarn and staffed with quest artists that spanned decades and multiple music genres.

We were hoping to get a tour stop from the band, but the chance that it would be the Demon Dayz festival seemed too good to be true (We have yet to receive confirmation from the band's publicist about the news). However, now Stereogum has dropped the same news in their profile of the band:

[Albarn will] tour Gorillaz most of this year, including bringing the new Demon Dayz festival — which at first seemed to be only occurring in Margate, England — to Chicago. (He has to tour the album heavily: as he notes, these records are not cheap to make, given the expansive and convoluted nature of the process.) After that, he’s basically booked through 2019.

This is very exciting news.

I remember breathlessly running to the Virgin Records in downtown Chicago the day the 2001 Gorillaz debut arrived in the import section of the store. I was a massive Blur fan, and since that band was known to most Americans at the time as the “woo hoo” band, Gorillaz arrived in the states virtually unnoticed—at first.

By the time their last full band album, 2010's Plastic Beach, came out, Albarn was arguably more internationally famous for his “cartoon band” than his original outfit. Gorillaz was a superstar outfit. But after an exultant tour that saw he and his assembled cast of world class bandmates taking the music out in front of the projections of the cartoon characters for the first time, it appeared the band might be done.

Gorillaz—Russel Hobbs, Noodle, 2D, and Murdoc Niccals.

So news of Humanz and the hope for live dates from the group has everyone going bonkers. While we all wait for official word on the Chicago fest date, feel free to download the group's new augmented reality app (in both iOS and Android versions).

UPDATE: Gorillazhas confirmed they will be playing at Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island on July 8.