Gorillaz’s The Mountain: India’s Voice In A Global music Resonance

dj5rivers - Digital Feature - October 2, 2025
Toronto, ON, Canada

For over two decades, Gorillaz have occupied a singular space in music; an ever-evolving multimedia experiment, part hip hop collective, part rock band, part digital art piece. With their ninth studio album, The Mountain (out March 20, 2026), Gorillaz are rewriting their story again. This time, they’ve turned east, recording across India and collaborating with some of the most monumental voices in Bollywood, Indian classical, and experimental music. This cultural exchange at a global scale might just be the project that reaffirms Gorillaz’s relevance in a world where global music flows faster than ever. 

India’s Music Moment

India’s music market is exploding. Streaming has skyrocketed, monetization streams are unlike the West and Bollywood soundtracks rack up billions of plays. Regional genres like Punjabi pop and Bengali hip hop are reaching international audiences in groundbreaking ways. What was once considered a niche is becoming a global force.

With “The Mountain”, the Gorillaz re-introduce themselves to a new generation of music lovers with what looks like another timeless album. By seeking out legends like Asha Bhosle, the eternal voice of Bollywood, experimental pioneer Asha Puthli, and classical powerhouses like Anoushka Shankar and the Bangash brothers, Gorillaz showed a deep respect for India’s musical heritage. They did their homework, they chose artists whose voices have defined cinema, carried centuries of tradition, and pushed boundaries globally, making this collaboration feel authentic and monumental rather than tokenistic. Gorillaz are pioneers of cross-genre collaboration in the mainstream and their catalogue proves it. With their debut single “Clint Eastwood” (2001), they paired Damon Albarn’s melancholic vocals with rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, revolutionizing blending alternative rock, hip hop, and trip-hop with animated visuals into mainstream. 

This is especially significant for Gorillaz, a band that built their reputation on crossing borders and blending worlds. From their debut single Clint Eastwood (2001), which paired Damon Albarn’s melancholic vocals with rapper Del the Funky Homosapien, they revolutionized what mainstream music could sound like: alternative rock, hip hop, trip-hop, and animated visuals all fused into one. Their entire catalogue is proof that they thrive on collaboration and cultural fusion.

Spotlight on Indian Legends: Voices That Shaped Music

Gorillaz’s The Mountain is anchored by collaborations with some of India’s most monumental musical voices, artists whose work has defined cinema, classical tradition, and global innovation.

Asha Bhosle, the Queen of Playback, is one of the most prolific singers in history, with over 12,000 recordings in more than 20 languages. Her voice defined Bollywood’s golden age, from haunting ghazals to high-energy disco tracks, giving emotion and life to on-screen legends. Her feature on The Shadowy Light is a canon-building cameo, tying Gorillaz’s animated universe to the enduring tradition of Bollywood vocals; where songs outlive actors and echo across generations.

Indian classical music resonates far beyond its borders with legends like Ravi Shankar, who brought the sitar to Woodstock, Zakir Hussain, who transformed the tabla into a global language. By collaborating with artists of this stature, Gorillaz acknowledge and elevate voices that have shaped global music history.

Another notable collaboration on this album is with Asha Puthli, a crossover pioneer from 1970s New York, merged Indian vocal textures with jazz, funk, and psychedelic soul; collaborating with artists like Ornette Coleman and breaking new ground for Indian music in the West. Her return on The Mountain feels poetic, she represents the first wave of Indian crossover, and Gorillaz the new wave, together embodying India’s central role in global innovation.

Animation Meets Bollywood Spectacle

Jamie Hewlett’s visuals have always been central to the Gorillaz mythos. With The Mountain, he draws on Indian aesthetics: the album title rendered in Devanagari script, motifs inspired by Indian cinema, and Gorillaz’s avatars placed against surreal South Asian backdrops. A natural fit as Bollywood is no stranger to animation, fantasy, and spectacle. Like Gorillaz, it has always blurred the line between reality and imagination. In The Mountain, the two traditions meet: Bollywood’s playback dreamscapes and Gorillaz’s animated avatars co-exist in the same space.

Why The Mountain Will Matter

For Gorillaz: It’s a comeback that reminds the world that bridging cultures, genres, and art forms with ambition and true homage always elevates.

For India: It’s recognition that its singers, musicians, and storytellers are central architects of global music.

For the global music industry: It’s a roadmap to what cross-cultural collaboration should look like, one that is rooted, authentic, and visionary.

The Mountain marks the Gorillaz’s ninth album; a cultural milestone, a dialogue between traditions, and a vision of what music can be when it stops treating borders as barriers. In 2025/6, the stakes are higher. Across the West, rising anti-immigrant sentiment has threatened to reduce global culture to walls and borders. In this climate, Gorillaz collaborating with India’s most iconic voices is resistance. It asserts that world music is not an “import,” but a shared inheritance. It challenges the idea of separation by making art that thrives only when cultures collide.

By placing India’s voices at the heart of The Mountain, Gorillaz are reminding audiences everywhere that the future of music, like the future of society, depends on openness, exchange, and a refusal to let hate draw the boundaries of creativity.