Demon Dayz: Damon Albarn calls general election 'a real surprise and then an inevitable bullsh*t outcome'
'But this is only the beginning cos there’s some of you out there who weren’t able to vote this time, but next time you’ll be able to vote. It’s going to grow'
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Your support makes all the difference.Gorillaz's one-day festival at Margate's Dreamland, Demon Dayz, took place at a weird juncture for the British public.
An incredible, shocking result at the general election which saw young people come out in full force to help decimate the Conservative majority and boost Labour's standing under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn; only to see the Conservatives now seeking the cooperation of the anti-LGBTQ, climate change denying DUP.
During their Demon Dayz set, NME reports frontman Damon Albarn paused after the band's rendition of 'Tomorrow Comes Today', from their self-titled 2001 debut, and breached the subject of the election to the crowd.
"It's been a weird week in this country," he stated. "A real surprise and then an inevitable bullshit outcome. But this is only the beginning cos there’s some of you out there who weren’t able to vote this time, but next time you’ll be able to vote. It’s going to grow."
The political disenfranchisement of the young is something Albarn has spoken about previously, telling Channel 4: "We’re going down a route that doesn’t really listen to the voices of the young and it seems to be dictated by the more comfortable, older, English voter, Conservative voter essentially."
"I’m not talking about the person who’d voted Labour. I’m talking about your classic, Conservative middle England voter, and they’re the difference between 48 [% that voted to remain] and 52 [% that voted to leave], to my mind. And I just don’t understand why the country is allowing that nostalgic, somewhat distant idea about what this country should be dictate to the rest of us who feel very strongly that, you know, there are huge problems that need to be addressed."
"My daughter’s nearly 18 but she can’t vote in this election," he continued. "She’s hugely frustrated by that and I’m sure she represents a huge amount of people who just don’t feel like they can change anything now. And this is a point when we need to change stuff. We need to keep talking."
"I’m not trying to kind of, sorry, belittle the importance of people in middle [England], that specific king of person, who’s comfortable, doesn’t have necessarily a lot of financial problems anymore. You know, they’ve worked hard all their life, but they’re nostalgic. They want to go back. They don’t want to go forward. We need politics that moves, politicians that look forward and not nostalgic. Isolationism, to my mind, is going back. We need to go forward, we need to keep our minds open."
Demon Dayz was held at the Margate theme park Dreamland, seeing the Gorillaz supported by the likes of De La Soul, Little Simz, Kano, and Kilo Kish.
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