Loyal Time Out readers will doubtless be aware that Gorillaz have scheduled a show at Byblos Festival, July 20th. Beirut doesn’t tend to appear on many bands’ tour schedules, but Gorillaz have more reason than most to stop off here, having visited the city to recruit the National Orchestra For Arabic Music to play on ‘White Flag’ a standout track from their new album ‘Plastic Beach’.

Sadly the band themselves were not available to tell us how this collaboration and tour came about – chiefly because they’re fictional two-dimensional characters – so instead we interviewed the collective’s two master marionetteers, musical mastermind Damon Albarn (of ‘90s band Blur) and aesthetic overlord Jamie Hewlett (creator of Tank Girl). The normally taciturn Albarn, a longstanding world music nerd, speaks (relatively) excitably about working in the studio where Fairuz ‘recorded all her classic albums, which was very exciting. It’s just a wonderful part of the world, somewhat maligned in recent years, and always in a state of flux and uncertainty, but essentially, where in many ways the origins of a lot of the ideas which we still exist within come from. I really don’t think people in the West have any idea about how closely linked our cultures really are.’ Cultural considerations aside, the fundamental reason for adding Beirut to the tour was profoundly simple.

‘We met a lot of people when we were over who asked us if we were ever going to come and play in Beirut,’ Hewlett says. ‘So yeah, of course we wanted to.’ The show will not, sadly, be quite on the scale of their recent spectacular at the UK’s Glastonbury festival, which saw the band joined onstage by a host of A-list collaborators.

‘When we get to Beirut, it obviously won’t be quite as big,’ says Albarn. ‘And then Damascus will probably be quite a small affair but I think it’s very important that a band like us goes there, and I suppose we can in a way because we sort of have this, this sort of neutrality, And hopefully it will inspire people there enormously.

’ However, the band are bringing as much of a show as they can afford to, and are happy to lose money on the dates. Hewlett talks us through the exclusive cover image he was kind enough to paint for Time Out to commemorate the occasion.

‘It’s with all of the characters, finally reunited for the first time. We’ve got Murdoch, Noodle, 2D, Russell and the impostor Noodle. It’s like a family portrait of them, just presenting themselves on a cover.’ Like all of the Gorillaz videos, interviews, web content and even adverts, our cover fits into the rapidly-developing Gorillaz narrative. Although it’s a little too convoluted to explain here, it details how the Gorillaz line-up has been torn asunder by bad luck and ultraviolence, with guitarist Noodles having been replaced by a cyborg replicant and drummer Russell missing presumed bald.

‘I think with the third album, we felt it was necessary for us for a story to unfold out of Demon Days and what was happening with the characters,’ Hewlett says. ‘So we can play that out through the website, through the articles, through the characters being interviewed and all the stuff that happens on the website, and especially in the videos. The second one’s just come out and people seeing that will realise that there’s a story that’s going to run through all of the four, possibly five videos, depending on how many we do. It will reach a climactic ending.

’ Don’t spend too much time trying to decipher any possible clues as to the conclusion, though. The cover gives the characters some well-deserved downtime from their current packed schedule of recording, touring and machine gun combat, as depicted in the recent ‘Stylo’ video... ‘It’s like they’re taking a moment for a quick photo shoot with them all before they carry on fighting and trying to murder each other,’ says Hewlett. ‘So they sort of calm down for a second while this picture’s being taken, and then it’s back to the mayhem.’ Mayhem is something which comes naturally to Gorillaz, a band without a defined sound, stable line-up or aural agenda.

For full article check out July issue 23

Jul 20 8.30pm at Byblos Festival (09 542020, 03 538536) Citadel Walls. Tickets (01 999666) LL60,000-LL120,000.