Morcheeba: No More Spliff-Heads Any More
Author: Jonty Adderley
Saturday, July 20, 2002
8 years after naming their band Morcheeba (meaning "more dope") Ross Godrey and his brother Paul have (largely) put the weed behind them to come up with their third and best album so far, Charango. Similar in vibe to its multimillion selling predecessors "Who Can You Trust-" and B"ig Calm", it's distinguished by the sheer song-writing quality of its tracks, prompting the best performance yet from singer Syke. Perennial outsiders and never attracting the critical adoration all too often bestowed on peers like Massive Attack, Portishead and even Moloko, Morcheeba have nonetheless gone about their business with impressive single-mindedness, carving out a niche that's both solid and sound. Carrying out a day of international promotion at London's 5 star Conrad Hotel, they've come a long way from the days of eating baked beans in a cold flat off Finchley Road, a fact all three remember well.
"I look back and think; 'Fucking Hell, I'm glad I don't live like that anymore," laughs Ross.
"The biggest high that I could get then would be a 90p (US$1.50) can of high strength lager that would send me off my head for an hour."
Such is the demand for the trio, that both Skye and Ross intermittently skip out the room for international phoners, though Skye when she's sitting down remains withdrawn and largely quiet. Despite this, she oozes star quality, being both charismatic and, when smiling, distractingly beautiful (certainly to Skrufff's Jonty Adderley)
Skrufff: Starting with the album, what inspired its Latin theme-
Morcheeba (Ross): "We went to Sao Paulo on a promo trip for our previous record and we'd been expecting to fly into Rio, so when we arrived in Sao Paulo we discovered it's a concrete jungle. We were stuck in a hotel for days and basically being there didn't live up to our expectations of Brazil. So the song's about that disappointment but then the actual spirit of the city is also fucking marvellous, and we learned about bosa nova and Brazilian psychedelia, so we brought all those influences back. We were just taking elements we loved and throwing them in with the Morcheeba sound and hip hop beats."
Morcheeba (Paul): "The tropicalia stuff feels like we've opened a door into a new musical world. I was never very interested in the Latin jazz thing you have here (in London) it was more the psychedelic, folky edge of Brazilian music that really inspired us. Library music and film soundtrack music was also a source on inspiration, stuff that was never really popular. We used a guy called Nick Ingman, who actually made a lot of the orchestral stuff in the 60s and instead of sampling him, we brought him into the studio with a 40 piece orchestra and horns. We had big ambitions for the record and I think we've pulled it off."
Skrufff: You've recruited an unusual selection of collaborators from Slick Rick to Lambchop's Kurt Wagner, did you know these people beforehand-
Morcheeba(Ross): "Paul's always been a big fan of Slick Rick and we got in contact with him to do it. Kurt had been a friend of mine for a while, we'd done some gigs with him previously and when we asked him to write some lyrics, he offered to do a duet. Pace Won is from a hip hop crew called the Outsidaz and we just wanted to work with him. There are certain elements that we wanted on the record that the three of us couldn't provide, so that's why we got these people involved."
Morcheeba (Syke): "None of us are any good at rapping."
Morcheeba (Ross): "It's also to break the record up for us. We brought them in for the benefit of the record as a whole and collaborations are really fun to do,< Tags