One eskimO

Building on the gorillaz theme, here's another cartoon band. Indeed, the animation is created by Passion Pictures who also did the "original" cartoon band.

OK, chosen one sounds very James Blunt-esque, which loyal readers will know is far from a selling point. I even thought I'd be saying the same about kandi, but it developed into a decent and quite moving duet with some extremely familiar sounding vocals (the female being Candi Statton). In short, if you think gorillaz singing guitar based slow ballads, you're getting on the right track, if not quite totally there.

It's different, but good. And so it should be - produced by Rollo out of off of Faithless, it's got the unique trait that the 10 tracks in the album that was out on Monday ("All Balloons") form a story not just with the songs (which is quite rare in itself nowadays) but also with the videos. It's an animated musical perhaps, just without the complete absurdity of the average Disney cartoon.

The "real people" behind the project is a two piece - Kristan singing and Adam on drums (interview here). Their live performances - and I'm genuinely hoping to catch them at V this year - are a mix between the visuals and themselves, so they are clearly more than just a gimmicky cartoon and can genuinely play their instruments.

I think this album should start to make an impact. We'll certainly see.