Gorillaz Plastic Beach (33 1/3)

From the start, Gorillaz were as much conceptual art as a musical group. Created by Damon Albarn and visual artist Jamie Hewlett, the project imagined a virtual band that could push back against the empty, manufactured side of popular culture.

It soon grew into videos, books and games, building a surreal mythology while engaging with social and political themes. But Plastic Beach took that ambition even further.

Damon Albarn's encounter with plastic pollution at Hallsands Beach shaped the album's reflections on the Anthropocene, an epoch defined by humanity's impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems. This book reads Plastic Beach as a concept album on environmental damage, consumer culture and the possibility of imagining a future beyond this destructive era.