Gorillaz just announced their new album “The Mountain” and honestly, it feels like the perfect moment for the band’s visual universe to collide with the LEGO world in the most spectacular way possible. The album reportedly explores themes of evolution, creative peaks, and finding new heights, which makes the timing of Shirbler’s Flying Windmill Island MOC hitting 10,000 supporters on LEGO Ideas feel almost prophetic. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s animated collective has always been about pushing boundaries between music, animation, and culture, and now that ethos is getting the ultimate fan tribute in brick form.
The windmill island from “Feel Good Inc.” isn’t just a music video prop, it’s basically the visual DNA of Gorillaz’s Phase 2 era. That floating sanctuary became shorthand for creative escape and artistic freedom, appearing across multiple videos and cementing itself as one of the most recognizable symbols in alternative music culture. Now we’ve got a LEGO builder who clearly gets it, translating that surreal animated world into something tangible that sits perfectly on your shelf while your Crescent Moon or Plastic Beach vinyl spins nearby.
Designer: Shirbler
Shirbler’s build clocks in at around 1,800 pieces, which puts it in that sweet spot between ambitious display piece and reasonably achievable project. The technical execution here is genuinely impressive. The working windmill mechanism isn’t just a gimmick, it’s core to the experience, and the way the brown lattice pieces form those iconic blades feels like the perfect marriage of LEGO’s industrial aesthetic with Gorillaz’s hand-drawn charm. The red and white striping on the cylindrical tower is spot-on, matching the exact proportions from the animated source material.
Each of the four band members gets their own space within the windmill’s interior, visible through a cross-sectional view that turns the build into a playable dollhouse. 2D’s positioned at the island’s edge with his guitar, capturing that melancholic isolation from the original video, while Murdoc lurks inside with his bass, Noodle occupies her own level, and Russel holds it down at the top with his drums. The minifigures nail the Phase 2 aesthetic, from 2D’s blue hair to Murdoc’s greenish complexion.
The floating island’s understructure deserves serious props too. Those angular brown pieces create the perfect rocky, weathered look, while scattered white studs suggest embedded stones or the stylized bolts from Hewlett’s original illustrations. The lush vegetation on top, built from yellow and orange flower elements mixed with bright green baseplates, captures that slightly psychedelic, overgrown paradise vibe that made the windmill island feel like such a refuge from the dystopian city below.
Most fan-made MOCs (My Own Creations) get shared on the LEGO Ideas forum and gather votes from the broader community, a process that often sees me encouraging the readers (you) to vote for designs. However, this LEGO Ideas Gorillaz – Flying Windmill Island build’s already hit the 10k vote mark, which means it’s now being sent to LEGO’s internal team to review the design for a potential retail launch. Gorillaz’s ‘The Mountain’ drops officially in March 2026, which means we’ve got another 7-ish months to go – enough time for LEGO to green-light this build so we can pair our new album with some iconic Gorillaz memorabilia!
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