Location from Gorillaz by Damon Albarn & Jamie Hewlett
Murdoc's island studio in the South Pacific, constructed from compressed oceanic garbage — a paradise and a prison depending on who you ask.
Plastic Beach was Murdoc's project for Phase Three — the idea being to isolate the band (or himself) from the mainland and record in conditions of maximum creative freedom and minimum interruption. He built the island himself by compressing oceanic plastic waste, which is either an ecological statement or an accident of ambition, depending on your reading. For 2D, Plastic Beach was a prison — he was kept there against his will, surrounded by whales (his phobia), and unable to leave. For Murdoc, it was a creative high point and a logistical disaster. For the music, it produced the Plastic Beach album, which is considered one of Gorillaz's most ambitious and dissonant works. The island still exists, presumably, somewhere in the Pacific, slowly returning to its constituent trash.
A small island rising from the Pacific that is, on inspection, made of compacted plastic waste — bottles, debris, synthetic material pressed into something solid enough to build on. The surface has a particular quality in certain light: almost beautiful, deeply wrong. On it: a lighthouse converted into a studio, various outbuildings, a dock. The water around it is thick with whales, which is Murdoc's specific solution to keeping 2D from leaving.
Also known as: Plastic Beach, The Island, Murdoc's Island