Gorillaz, Andre 300 & James Murphy – Do Ya Thing

As promised, the MP3 of Gorillaz, Andre 300 and James Murphy has now debuted online. It’s slightly disappointing. Corporate issues aside (for what it’s worth, my favourite LCD Soundsystem album was 45:33, recorded for Nike), the main issue with Converse’s collaborations series (h5. whichh5. pits three disparate artists together) is the sheer number of musicians working and their disparateness. Andre 3000, Damon Albarn and James Murphy are masterful musicians, and, despite, or perhaps because of this, their collaboration never quite works – seeming to have carved the song in three, Damon’s verses don’t hang together with James’s choruses, and while Andre couldn’t actually make a terrible rap, it feels very stitched on. Perhaps it’s that the hierarchy inherent in RVNG INTL’s FRKWYS series (whose Sun Araw, Congos and M Geddes Gangres is messy but glorious) is absent, meaning that the musicians opt for dull bipartisanship over free authority. Anyway, make your own mind up over at the Converse blog.