April 11, 2006 11:21

Gorillaz announce last live show plans

Damon Albarn's planning to call time on the cartoon outfit

Damon Albarn has said Gorillaz will play their last shows in Las Vegas.

Albarn revealed that the band’s rumoured world tour has been put on “the back burner” for the time being, but he hinted that the cartoon outfit may return to the US for a string of shows in Las Vegas before they break up.

He added: “There's a possibility of doing these shows one more time, in Las Vegas. But we're not sure when. I love the idea of Gorillaz - on their third-ever [set of gigs] - playing Vegas. And, of course, it'll be big and all bells and whistles. And then that's it."

He told MTV.COM: "We're putting Gorillaz back on the shelf after these last few gigs and working on other things for a while. It's been brilliant, and this time it's been a runaway success, so why not just leave it like that? So we're retiring. We've been taking notes and we're going to do it hip-hop style, like Jay-Z."

The band have set no specific date for their retirement but before they do, the cartoon outfit will release a computer game, a movie and a Chinese opera called ‘Monkey: Journey To The West’.

As previously reported on NME.COM, the band’s future had been thrown into doubt after Albarn admitted that 2005's ‘Demon Days’ is “probably the last album we make”.

Meanwhile, Blur drummer Dave Rowntree has just completed work on a new animated comedy show called ‘Empire Square', which is due to air in the US later this month.

Rowntree, who studied art and animation in college and runs the London based animation company Nanomation, helped to direct the voice talent of the three main characters and he had a major input into the “creative process” behind the scenes, reports Billboard.