Gorillaz, 'Rhinestone Eyes' (Sessions)

AOL: Do you all recall what you all were doing when the idea of 'Plastic Beach' came to you?

Jamie Hewlett: We were all on holiday in Devon, Damon's place, with our kids and a friend of ours had just been to some festival and had done a show, GSS -- Gorillaz Sound System. He was telling us the reaction from the crowd to all of the Gorillaz songs and sort of got us excited about doing another album, that there were still a lot of people out who were interested. That was about two years ago.

Damon Albarn: When we've made an album we go "Oh,that's it." We've pushed it as far as you could take it with this one, and we kind of mentally say "that's the end" and "that's right," and you just go on with doing other stuff.

Hewlett: They just take so long to do as well. It's four years, sometimes a little bit longer, of a lot of fun, exciting work but it's hard. By the time you finish, you seek the death of it really so you have to sort go off and do something else.

AOL: Does your art develop as the record develops, where you're listening to the music as it's being written and recorded?

Hewlett: We start exactly the same time. It sort of grows over. It was about two and a half years ago that we started doing this. We share a studio in West London, everybody's in the same building, so I'm on the top floor, he's on the bottom floor. And everybody we work with lives right around the corner.

Albarn: Well, not everyone.

Hewlett: Not everyone. Not Bobby Womack.