The latest track and music video from Gorillaz's Song Machine project is called The Valley of the Pagans, and it's shot within Grand Theft Auto V. The video transports the cartoon songsters into a chill cruise around the city of Los Santos. It's a journey of mellow beats featuring lo-fi prince Beck's voice on a video call via a GTA5 staple iFruit phone in the corner.
Song Machine is a year-long project by Gorillaz to release all kinds of collaborations accompanied by neat music videos, like this one with Elton John. The Valley of the Pagans is not the first to be about video games, as Song Machine episode 5 was called PAC-MAN (ft. ScHoolboy Q.)
It is an extremely "2020 Entertainment Business Production Conditions" music video. I can only assume that all this time inside has inflicted a large number of gaming hours on both Gorillaz creators and Beck himself. Either way the city of Los Santos is now a canon alternate dimension inside the Gorillaz's
The video mostly consists of chill beats as the Gorillaz drive around the city, running stoplights and and showing off the visuals of the GTA world. Lofi beats to ignore traffic laws to. The song lyrics have something to say about simulated reality, but, you know what, I'm not going to try and dissect them here.
If you'd like to recreate the Gorillaz' car from this video inside GTA, a souped up Declasse Vigero, a lovely YouTube commenter called Terry The Black Mage has provided a how-to guide.
