Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett Monkey around on Pitchfork

Last year saw the creators of Gorillaz, Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, once again team up with each other to create an aural and visual masterpiece, Monkey: Journey To The West.

Based on the Chinese story of the Monkey King (that's Monkey Magic to you and me), the album was released late last year and became the first Mandarin record to make the UK Top 10, also making it into the Top 5 albums chart.

The duo sat down with Pitchfork to talk about Monkey, Gorillaz and the demise of.

Pitchfork: After the success of Gorillaz, you must have had your choice of projects. When [New York-based opera director] Chen Shi-Zheng approached you, what attracted you guys to this particular story?

JH: Well it wasn't-- it was Alex Poots [artistic director] from the Manchester International Festival who came to us first. We had done work with him about a year before; we opened the Manchester Festival with five nights of the [live] Demon Days project. And he said, "Are you interested in this Monkey project?" And we were promised a trip to China, so we thought, "Hey, we'll go to China, check it out, see what we think." And if we don't like it, or don't like the people involved, at least we got a free trip to China!

Read the full interview here.