Some collaborations you plan for months. This one we could barely believe we were invited to.

When Gorillaz rolled out The Mountain, they did something unusual for India: a run of invite-only advance listening sessions, held in real rooms in front of real people, in Mumbai, Goa, Hyderabad, Delhi and Bangalore. Not a launch party. A listening session: the album played front to back, uninterrupted, in a closed room, before the record was out anywhere in the world.

Bangalore's was held at Rams Musique on MG Road. If you have bought physical music in this city, you know it: the shop has been at it for more than forty years, long enough to have survived cassettes, CDs, the download era, and the vinyl revival that followed. There are few better rooms in India to hear a record properly for the first time.

An album with Indian fingerprints on it

Part of why the India sessions mattered is that The Mountain has Indian musicians woven through it: Anoushka Shankar, Asha Bhosle, Asha Puthli, and the sarod brothers Amaan Ali Bangash and Ayaan Ali Bangash. Hearing that in a Bangalore record shop, on a proper system, with the people who actually buy records, was a particular kind of good.

What we brought

Drinks, and the argument behind them. A listening session is precisely the sort of evening where you want to be fully present, you are there to catch what is happening in a mix you have never heard before.

A roomful of strangers discovering new music at the same moment, no phones out, no set to dance to. Our favourite kind of analog evening.

First shared on our Instagram →