Noodle, the band's guitarist, is seemingly dead. She was last seen falling through the skies in the "El Manana" video from Demon Days, and it's since been discovered that she was kidnapped by demons and taken to Hell afterwards. The Noodle that's around now is a not-exactly-fully-functional cyborg clone built by Murdoc, Gorillaz' Keith Richards-gone-even-more-wrong bassist, as part-musical replacement and part-bodyguard. Murdoc is being hunted down by a group of disgruntled pirates called The Black Clouds after selling them shitty weapons in a get-rich-quick scheme gone wrong. After the Clouds' destroyed the Gorillaz' previous recording studio (Kong Studios, home of the band's website for the first two albums), Murdoc decamped to Point Nemo - an island described as "the furthest point from any landmass known to man" - and set up a new base of operations to make a new album. Not that the rest of the band wanted to; drummer Russel (Who, way back during the first album, managed to conjure Del The Funkee Homosapien from his head in the "Clint Eastwood" video) and singer 2D refused to join in, but a quick kidnapping - as seen in the 2D tease - and a drum machine fixed those problems.

That would seem to be enough - It's definitely more effort than normally goes into interviews surrounding a new album - but Plastic Beach has more. Apparently, the album is named after a mysterious book containing the history of the world that Murdoc found on Point Nemo, one that also suggests that 2010 may be the mythical End of Days, giving the videos, website and other promotional efforts surrounding the music even more of a storyline to play with. Is Plastic Beach all about the apocalypse? Will the real Noodle escape from Hell (Is there still a "real Noodle"?)? We know that a pissed-off Russel seems to be headed to the island after all, will he save the day? And what do the Black Clouds really want?