Ross and Paul Godfrey aka Morcheeba return with their fifth album The Antidote on September 27, 2005. The record marks a number of significant changes for the band, most notably their first album without singer Skye Edwards. She has been
replaced by Daisy Martey, formerly vocalist for the band Noonday Underground. The album is also the band's first for Echo Records following their departure from Warners/East West.
Morcheeba were the pioneers of downtempo, the architects of trip-hop, and the masterminds behind records that have now sold over five million copies. "We invented chillout with songs," says Ross Godfrey. The sound soon became synonymous with spectacular sunsets and late night comedowns. Eventually, somehow inevitably, it ended up everywhere - soundtracking films and adverts, included on compilation albums and de rigeur at dinner parties and spawning the likes of Air, Zero 7 and Dido.
Morcheeba released their first album Who Can You Trust in 1996. Big Calm, released two years later, saw their profile soar worldwide as they defined a new blend of soul, hip-hop, country and electronica. Its follow up, Fragments Of Freedom (2000), took a more poppy
pproach, while Charango (2002) saw them collaborate with the likes of Lambchop's Kurt Wagner and legendary rap artist Slick Rick. Parts Of The Process, a Greatest Hits album followed in 2003, as well as a live DVD - From Brixton To Beijing - that contained documentary footage of their groundbreaking tour of China.
After four albums, something had changed in the Morcheeba camp. Paul and Ross, burnt out on touring and the decadence that made it bearable, found it tough to even contemplate working together. Two years on sitting in their South London studio shortly after the completion of their new album, The Antidote, Ross sums up the situation. "It was clear that the three members of Morcheeba were pulling in different directions, with their own interests and priorities making it increasingly difficult to work together. The glue of desperation and hunger that kept us together during the early years had come unstuck.
Ross' answer was simple. He put Morcheeba on ice. "I traveled a lot, to South America, South East Asia and North Africa. I started a rock group called The Jukes, played shows and released a single. It was fun. I found it cathartic to play loud."
Paul's approach was somewhat more eccentric, arguably in keeping with his general demeanour. "After the last world tour," he explains, a smile creeping across his face, "I returned home and built a log cabin at the bottom of my garden. I disappeared there for four months solid. I exercised obsessively. In the morning I'd take stimulating 'Stacker' pills, get stoned and work out for hours. For lunch I'd eat tinned fish and cereal bars, and in the evenings I took shamanic truffles on an empty stomach and tripped out listening to wild music." It's hard to tell whether he's joking. "I lost four stone, but it's not a regime I'd recommend..."
Paul also started his own project, Capricorn 2, a hip hop production team with long term studio collaborator Chris Harrison. Like Ross, who had set up his own label (27 Records), Paul also started releasing 12"s through his own Capritone imprint. "We proved to ourselves we could succeed individually," he says, "and the new found independence reignited our relationships with sound."
For most bands, parting with a singer might seem a
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Paul's approach was somewhat more eccentric, arguably in keeping with his general demeanour. "After the last world tour," he explains, a smile creeping across his face, "I returned home and built a log cabin at the bottom of my garden. I disappeared there for four months solid. I exercised obsessively. In the morning I'd take stimulating 'Stacker' pills, get stoned and work out for hours. For lunch I'd eat tinned fish and cereal bars, and in the evenings I took shamanic truffles on an empty stomach and tripped out listening to wild music." It's hard to tell whether he's joking. "I lost four stone, but it's not a regime I'd recommend..."
Paul also started his own project, Capricorn 2, a hip hop production team with long term studio collaborator Chris Harrison. Like Ross, who had set up his own label (27 Records), Paul also started releasing 12"s through his own Capritone imprint. "We proved to ourselves we could succeed individually," he says, "and the new found independence reignited our relationships with sound."
For most bands, parting with a singer might seem a setback, but for the Godfrey's it was an opportunity to start again. "Morcheeba started out as the two of us," Paul clarifies. "It was always mine and Ross' baby, though it's more like a moody teenager these days! So Skye leaving wasn't as big a deal for us as it may seem to other people, but it meant we had to find the right voice to collaborate with again. We were approached by many singers, but none had the timeless, world class quality that Skye had." Then a friend gave them an album by a band called Noonday Underground fronted by a young singer called Daisy Martey. "Daisy's vocals changed everything," Paul states emphatically.
"We were impressed with her Grace Slick psych-soul voice," Ross continues, "and more importantly we were won over by her dynamic range." Paul phoned Daisy and discovered she was no longer a part of Noonday Underground. They invited her to the studio, and within days it was clear the new picture was complete.
The Antidote is the sound of a band challenging and reinventing themselves without losing touch with the history and sound that they innovated. It sees Morcheeba broaden their horizons beyond the downtempo sound with which they are associated and embraces a whole raft of different influences as diverse as Aphex Twin and Bonnie Prince Billy, cult leftfield guitar heroes like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, and further back to the likes of Fairport Convention, David Axelrod and Jimi Hendrix. It's a more upbeat record that raises the tempo to match the rougher, edgier vocals that Daisy brings to the mix. It's still Morcheeba, no doubt about it but coloured now by a more brazen acknowledgement of the band's personal listening tastes.
"We wanted to up the ante a bit, tempo wise and dynamically," Ross continues. "We wanted to have a mix of that late 60s psychedelic sound, but with a modern consciousness."
"I love any of that stuff where they take a lush, expensive sounding backdrop," Paul interrupts excitedly, "and then just have rock 'n' roll bass and drums rattling away, like Scott Walker. It's just such a cool sound, the trashy garage-ness of the bass and drums..."
"We were going to call the album Shroomers, the psychedelic Rumours," Paul jokes. "Or maybe
