Before I begin to describe the project said above in the title, I have to be honest. I am musically dumb. Almost all of the many different musical artists and styles mentioned these days I have no real idea about. This could be blamed on the fact that until fairly recently, I haven't really cared much about music as a medium.Going back to when I was super young, my family has been very tuned in musically. All of them had artists from a variety of different genres that they admired, as my brother started getting into rap during middle school alongside expanding into many different genres into high school, and my other family members seemed to love whatever came out of Fueled by Ramen in the mid 2000s, as well as a myriad of different artists from different time periods and genres. But whatever they listened to, they always seemed invested in the world of music. I seemed to be the odd man out. While I did have CDs of my own, they were of cartoon soundtracks, and unlike the other family members I wasn't really interested in searching for anything outside of that strict comfort zone. In middle school and into high school, that interest shifted towards anime music. My MP3 was flooded with opening and ending songs from the different shows I was watching, in whatever quality I could find on youtube. I could have stayed the course and only listened to anime singles had it not been for two bands in particular that would change the way that I listen to and consume music.The first was Asian Kung Fu Generation. During the run of the anime Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, also known as Erased, I became addicted to the theme song to the show, known as Re;Re. I had some history with the artist before, with their tracks submitted for Naruto, Bleach, and the live-action adaptation of Solanin. This time, when seeking out the theme song for the show, I used a different source for finding an mp3 of the show's theme. Instead of finding lower quality uploads via Youtube, I instead used the site NyaaTorrents, a site I had heard of from imageboards used for files of anime, manga, visual novels and, most importantly for this post, Japanese music. I found there the album carrying the original version of Re;Re, Sol-fa. I downloaded the album, burned it onto a blank CD-R, and heard the whole thing through an old Sony Discman. I adored it. Every track was catchy, had great vocals, and great guitar work. It was an enchanting experience for me, and as I dove headfirst to the discography, my method of listening to music changed from individual tracks by certain artists, to going through an artist's body of work as a whole, staying content with full albums than just scattered singles. This also led me down a path of finding more j-rock and j-pop groups go in-depth to (although this could make up another post entirely.)The next, possibly more massive change to my music habits was my introduction to Gorillaz. This was another band I had heard of before diving into their backcatalog, but was less attached to than with Asian Kung Fu Generation. Feel Good Inc was one of the first pop songs I remember constantly hearing played on radios around the house and on the computer my oldest sister used. I have faint memories of seeing its iconic music video as well, even if I had no idea where and how I saw it. As my older brother started getting deeper into music in middle school, Gorillaz was one of the bands he first found himself attracted towards, alongside artists like Daft Punk. It was around this time I remember him playing the music videos from their self-titled album, and I thought the idea of an animated band seemed cool, even if I never even bothered to go back and listen to the albums proper then. Flash forward 3 years, and I found myself cruising online and stumbling upon an old VHS recording of a Toonami special called the "Midnight Run Special Edition." The one hour special included music videos from Kenna, Daft Punk, and Gorillaz with Toonami music videos. Of the videos on display, I loved Gorillaz the most. The blend of hip hop and electronic music mixed with artwork and animation similar to the output from Cartoon Network in the early 2000's was mesmerizing to me. I watched the videos several more times and soon I heard the three main albums and two B-side albums throughout the summer of 2016. I noticed that there was an even deeper mix of genres then what I saw in those early videos, and this curiosity soon turned to obsession. The next year, I soon dug into the music of Damon Albarn, finding an appreciation in projects such as Blur and what I believe to be his finest work in the 2007 album The Good, the Bad and the Queen. I also within the last year been diving into the discographies of several of the artists who collaborated with Gorillaz, such as Miho Hatori and Del the Funkee Homosapien.This brings me to the next subject, the so-called Circle of Friendz Project. So not too long ago, I came across a reddit post from user ImNotAnEffigy throwing out a list of recommended albums from Gorillaz collaborators for the people who want to dive in a little deeper into the people who make the magic happen, so to speak:I took that list, added more collabs who only appeared in live shows or who saw Gorillaz collaborate on their own albums as opposed to the collabs appearing on the Gorillaz albums,then renumbering them. I also swapped out certain albums that I had already heard, as I wanted to place emphasis on albums I have not already heard, so no Deltron 3030 or any Blur albums or whatever. I then put the numbers into a generator and whatever pops out, I review first. This was inspired by Digibro videos on youtube where he numbers off anime to watch first after randomly generating a number. This method of randomization I found keeps me excited and on my toes as I never quite know what to expect next. After that I write down my thoughts on the album track-by-track in a notebook and post a cleaned up version of my findings to the internet. So far, it's actually gone very well, as I have listened to and scribbled down my thoughts on two very well done albums and will be working on a third in the next few days. Of course, these findings will be uploaded to this very blog soon enough. There's not a specific schedule for these posts, but the writings are easy to make, so expect them fairly often. And you can do it too! If you're just as insane as I am, and want to discover some newfound artists or reconnect with albums you haven't heard in a while, here's a link to the Google doc with every album I will be covering, updating it often to link to blog posts I have already made. The whole point of this little exercise is for me to learn more about music through my favorite band by far, a way for me to expand my horizons and for me to try things out that if it wasn't for Gorillaz, I never would've picked up or in many cases would have even heard of. Shoutout to ImNotAnEffigy again for providing me the inspiration to start this project.