On The Mountain, Gorillaz used archival recordings by six collaborators who had died: Dennis Hopper, Bobby Womack, Dave Jolicoeur, Tony Allen, Proof, and Mark E. Smith. Their voices appear across five tracks on the album released on February 27, 2026. The documented source is the band's collection of earlier sessions, not newly recorded performances by those artists or a substantiated claim that artificial intelligence recreated their voices.
The contributions have distinct histories. Damon Albarn identified alternate takes of a 2005 narration, conversations captured in the studio, unused recordings from earlier sessions, and even a nearly complete freestyle recovered from storage. For two of the guests, the credits and interviews establish the posthumous appearance but do not pinpoint the original session.
Which five tracks feature posthumous collaborators?
The track list on Gorillaz's Bandcamp page and the detailed credits published by Pitchfork identify the songs in which each voice appears. The specific origins below come from Albarn's explanations to Homegrown; where an original session was not identified, that limit is made explicit.
| Track | Deceased contributor | Documented origin of the recording |
|---|---|---|
| The Mountain | Dennis Hopper | Alternate takes of the narration for Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head, recorded for Demon Days (2005). Credited as spoken words. |
| The Moon Cave | Bobby Womack | Conversations and speech preserved from previous sessions with Albarn, including time spent in the vocal booth; no precise source track was identified. |
| The Moon Cave | Dave Jolicoeur (Trugoy, De La Soul) | Drawn from the archive of past Gorillaz collaborations; the original session or take was not specified in the sources consulted. |
| The Hardest Thing | Tony Allen | Spoken voice recovered from earlier collaborator recordings; the exact session was not publicly identified in the consulted sources. |
| The Manifesto | Proof (D12) | A complete, previously unreleased freestyle discovered among older recordings. The new song was built around that performance. |
| Delirium | Mark E. Smith (The Fall) | Unused material recorded during the Plastic Beach sessions. Albarn fashioned a new song around the surviving vocal. |
Six artists appear on five songs because The Moon Cave features both Bobby Womack and Dave Jolicoeur. The table describes what is documented about the recordings' origins, not every technical step in editing and mixing.
How Damon Albarn recovered the recordings
In the Homegrown interview published on February 26, 2026, Albarn explained that he searched through files from musicians he had worked with before. Some sessions retained little beyond their released recordings, while others preserved conversations, improvisations, and unused takes. His stated intention was to bring those people into the world of the new record.
Dennis Hopper is the clearest example. The actor had recorded multiple readings of Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head for Demon Days. Albarn recalled that the word 'mountain' appeared repeatedly in the archived takes; Hopper therefore did not return to the studio to record the 2026 album. The Mountain credits his contribution as spoken words rather than singing.
Bobby Womack left a different kind of archive: besides performances, it contained exchanges from his time working with Albarn. For Mark E. Smith, the source was unused material from the Plastic Beach sessions. Proof's rediscovered contribution was an entire, previously unheard freestyle, which became the foundation of The Manifesto. Those four accounts are specific; the consulted documentation does not provide the same level of detail for the individual sources of Tony Allen's and Dave Jolicoeur's voices.
Old recordings share tracks with present-day collaborators
A guest credit does not, on its own, tell us when a voice was recorded. The Moon Cave places the posthumous contributions of Womack and Jolicoeur alongside Asha Puthli, Jalen Ngonda, and Black Thought. The Manifesto combines Proof's archived freestyle with a contribution from Trueno. An older performance can therefore become part of a composition and musical production completed much later.
The credits also distinguish the form of each contribution: Dennis Hopper and Tony Allen are listed under 'spoken words', while other performers are credited as vocalists. Elsewhere the album features Anoushka Shankar, Ajay Prasanna, Amaan and Ayaan Ali Bangash, IDLES, and Johnny Marr. Describing all these collaborations as posthumous recordings would obscure both the musicians' contributions and the actual history of the archive.
Were the voices generated with artificial intelligence?
That is not what the cited material documents. Albarn describes searching for and reusing existing sound recordings. Homegrown explains the provenance of material involving Hopper, Womack, Smith, and Proof, while Pitchfork's credits specify who speaks or sings on each track. Together, these sources support an account of posthumous contributions assembled from historical recordings.
That evidence is not a technical audit of the entire production. Without comprehensive documentation of every tool used for editing, restoration, or mixing, it would be inaccurate to state that no AI technology was involved at any stage. Equally, the examined sources do not support a claim that these six voices were generated synthetically.
Why Gorillaz brought these voices back
The Mountain developed around experiences of loss and Albarn's and Jamie Hewlett's travels in India. Both discussed the deaths of their fathers during the making of the project. Gathering voices of people who were no longer alive gave musical shape to an idea already running through the album: how someone's memory remains present.
Rather than portraying the cameos as collaborations recorded in 2026, the more faithful reading of the evidence is that earlier performances were reorganized into new songs. Albarn has explained the exact provenance of some of them; where he has not, the credits establish whose voice is heard but do not justify inventing the rest of its history.
