The entire album was recorded on group co-founder Damon Albarn's iPad over the course of 32 days during the North American leg of the Escape to Plastic Beach World Tour in October 2010 and mixed in England by Stephen Sedgwick. Other instruments used included a Korgvocoder, a ukulele, a microKORG, an Omnichord, a Minimoog Voyager, a Melodica, a guitar, a piano and a Korg Monotron. Albarn said of the recording: "I literally made it on the road. 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." The album includes four guest artists, three of which have worked with Albarn before. Mick Jones and Bobby Womack appeared on the previous Gorillaz album Plastic Beach, as did Paul Simonon, who also worked on Albarn's project The Good, the Bad & the Queen. American singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams of N*E*R*D recorded a track with Albarn while touring together which did not appear on the album.
Release and promotion
The album was first announced on 20 December 2010 as a holiday gift to fans. On 22 December, the music video for "Phoner to Arizona", which consists of a compilation of footage and images taken from the tour and the phase, was posted on YouTube as a way to promote the album. The album was first released to stream for free on the Gorillaz website on 25 December; it was available as a download for paying members of the band's Sub-Division club, a premium access campaign the band ran throughout 2010. The album was given an official release on 19 April 2011.
Reception
The Fall received mixed to positive reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 67, based on 25 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Praise was mainly focused on the album's unique qualities and experimental nature, with Rolling Stone stating that the album was "a wistfully spaced-out, subtly cheeky spin on the road-trip epic" and NME calling it "quiet but ambitious". However, some critics felt that it lacked the offerings of previous Gorillaz albums, with The Guardian stating that it was "oddly out of character" compared to Plastic Beach.
