Demon Days by Gorillaz

Demon Days, the second Gorillaz album, arrived in May 2005, released in Britain on Parlophone, and it's the moment the cartoon band stopped looking like a novelty. Danger Mouse produced most of it with the group, Jason Cox and James Dring at Studio 13 in London, and Damon Albarn pitched it as a loose concept record about a world where night has fallen, sparked by a trip through poor rural areas of China.

It is a dark, strange and gorgeous ride, hip-hop, trip hop, art rock and pop spliced together under skies full of apocalypse and post-9/11 dread, and far gloomier than the debut. The guest list reads like a fever dream: De La Soul, Neneh Cherry, Martina Topley-Bird, Roots Manuva, MF Doom, Ike Turner, Bootie Brown of the Pharcyde, Shaun Ryder and Dennis Hopper. "Feel Good Inc." rides a lazy, rubbery groove and won the band its only Grammy, "Dare" struts like a nightclub on a slow-motion loop, and "El Manana" aches.

Jamie Hewlett's animation carried the band's image as always, and instead of a tour there were Demon Days Live residencies in Manchester and New York, five shows in each city, with Albarn and company playing in silhouette behind his visuals. It went straight to number one in Britain, sold eight million copies around the world, and convinced the doubters that Gorillaz was a serious proposition. The leftovers turned up on D-Sides in 2007.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.