Gorillaz Recorded Their New Album Across India and It Might Be Their Best Yet

Gorillaz just dropped an album recorded across India and it is not what anyone expected. The Mountain, the band's ninth studio album, was made in studios across Mumbai, Delhi, and Jaipur. It features Asha Bhosle, Anoushka Shankar on sitar, and sarod masters Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash. This is not a token collaboration. It is a full album built around Indian sounds, recorded on Indian soil, and it has a Metacritic score of 86. Universal acclaim.

Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett came to India in late 2022 after a personal loss. Hewlett's mother in law suffered a stroke in Jaipur and the trip became something much deeper than tourism. The grief, the warmth of the people they met, and the music they heard on the streets ended up shaping the entire album. The Mountain deals with mortality and loss, but the Indian instrumentation gives it a quality that makes death sound almost joyful.

The standout track is The Shadowy Light. Asha Bhosle sings the Hindi hook Majhi Re Majhi over a swirling arrangement of sarod and electronic textures. She initially hesitated to join the project but changed her mind after hearing the track. Her voice on this song carries a weight that no synthesizer can replicate. At 93, Bhosle proves that her range knows no genre boundaries, no borders, and certainly no retirement plans.

How Gorillaz Turned India Into the Sound of The Mountain

Anoushka Shankar's sitar weaves through multiple tracks, adding a texture that electronic production alone could never achieve. The Bangash brothers bring sarod lines that ground the album in classical Indian tradition even as beats thump underneath. Flautist Ajay Prasanna appears too, and his contributions feel less like guest features and more like the foundation the album stands on. Gorillaz recorded across multiple Indian cities, picking up local musicians and sounds along the way. The production is layered and warm in a way the band has not sounded in years.

Rolling Stone India's cover story on The Mountain goes deep into how these collaborations happened. Albarn described the process as discovering a musical language he had always felt connected to but never properly explored. The album's tracklist reads like a journey across continents, but India is the beating heart of it. Critics have compared it to Plastic Beach in terms of ambition, except this one has the depth of real human grief and real cultural immersion behind it.

Why Gorillaz Recording in India Matters for Desi Music

International artists recording entire albums in India is still rare. When it happens, it usually means one Bollywood feature or a sample cleared after the fact. Gorillaz did the opposite. They went to India, stayed, recorded, collaborated with legends, and let Indian music shape the final product. India's music scene has been having a moment, from the Circoloco Mumbai cancellation drama that shook the EDM world to rap artists breaking out in 30 languages. The Mountain proves the world is listening back.

Listening parties for The Mountain were held free in Bengaluru, Delhi, Goa, Hyderabad, and Mumbai before the album dropped. That kind of India first rollout for a global act is unprecedented. The appetite for live international music in India has exploded. We saw it when classic rock fans went wild over the Scorpions India tour announcement earlier this month. Gorillaz tapped into something deeper though. They did not just perform here. They created here. Is this the model you want more international artists to follow? Tell us in the comments.

The Mountain is proof that Indian music is not a flavour to sprinkle on top. It is a foundation strong enough to hold an entire album together. Asha Bhosle, Anoushka Shankar, and the Bangash brothers are not guests on this record. They are co-architects. India's concert scene keeps growing with acts like Calvin Harris making a splash here, and now Gorillaz has raised the bar for what collaboration actually means. Catch more desi stories right here on DesiDodo.

Gorillaz recording across India is quietly historic. Damon Albarn has always chased the edges of the music map — Mali, Cuba, now India — but this time the context is different. India's music scene in 2026 is not an exotic backdrop. It is a fully formed ecosystem with its own production houses, its own global stars, and a Gen Z audience that knows exactly what it wants. When a band like Gorillaz embeds themselves in that ecosystem rather than just sampling it from a distance, the results tend to hit differently. The question is whether the collaboration is genuine or extractive. Indian musicians have spent years watching international artists come in, record a tabla line or a sitar riff, and disappear without credit or royalties. If Gorillaz actually worked with Indian artists as co-creators rather than local colour, this album could be something groundbreaking. Desi internet will be watching the credits very closely. Blur-meets-Mumbai is already a sentence that should not work but somehow does. If this album delivers, it might open doors for Indian independent artists on a global stage that no Bollywood composer has ever managed to unlock. Are you excited for this, or cautiously skeptical about how India actually gets represented?