Gorillaz will release their fourth album as a free download on Christmas Day, Damon Albarn has revealed. The band's days may be numbered, but that won't stop Murdoc, 2D and Noodle from loosing a batch of new and cut-up songs, inspired by their latest tour of America.

Albarn said last month that he was hoping to release the album, which was recorded on his iPad, "before Christmas". We had speculated the LP could be part of the Gorillaz website's digital advent calendar; Albarn confirmed it in an interview with Australia's Perth Now newspaper. "There is a daily door that opens to reveal a gift," he explained. "On Christmas Eve a video for one of the new songs from the iPad album will be released. Then, on Christmas Day fans get the whole album downloaded to their computer for free as a gift."

The album was made in hotel rooms over the course of a month, as Gorillaz's star-studded arena show toured the US. "I literally made it on the road," Albarn said. "I didn't write it before, I didn't prepare it. I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience in America. If I left it until the New Year to release it then the cynics out there would say, 'Oh well, it's been tampered with', but if I put it out now they'd know that I haven't done anything because I've been on tour ever since."

After finding inspiration in America and sunshine in Australia, Albarn doesn't seem eager to return to Britain. "[The UK] is a country in terrible decline," he said, tongue – we hope? – in cheek. "I don't recommend Australians come over any more. It really is beyond me why they turn up in their numbers, I mean thousands and thousands of them, to this miserable, grey, overcast, overpopulated, dirty, depressed little island in the northern hemisphere."

"All we have to offer them," added Gorillaz co-founder Jamie Hewlett, "is Walkabout pubs."

Earlier this week, Hewlett said it may be time for Gorillaz to call it quits. "This would be a wonderful point to leave [the band]," he said. "This tour, with these people, is a one-off. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience."