FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Morcheeba – Big Calm
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I don’t think that…
IN THIS PHOTO: Morcheeba in 2013
I have included a Morcheeba album on my site before. One that I have been listening to a lot recently is Big Calm. Their second studio album, it begins with the gorgeous track, The Sea. Made irresistible by the vocals of Skye Edwards, I think that this is the group’s best album. The recording of Big Calm started on Christmas Day 1995, as Morcheeba members Paul and Ross Godfrey as they were awaiting the release of Who Can You Trust?. After demos had been laid down at their home studio, the Godfreys brought in vocalist Skye Edwards and a number of guest performers to complete the record. I think that one of the secret ingredients of Big Calm’s sensuality and hypnotic nature is Edwards’ voice. Although she featured on the 1996 debut, Who Can You Trust?, I think her voice is richer and more impressive on Big Calm. It is a terrific album that you should get on vinyl if you can. Big Calm reached the top twenty in the U.K. and won a raft of positive reviews upon its release. I will get to one of those reviews at the end. Prior to getting to a review, Music Radar published a feature about Morcheeba’s Big Calm in 2014. They spoke to Paul Godfrey about the making of the album. He gives a track-by-track recollection. I have selected The Sea because it is my favourite song from Big Calm:
“It's Christmas Day 1995, and Morcheeba brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey are sacking off any idea of a follow-up course of mince pies, and instead heading to the studio right next to the bedsit they share, pissed as newts, to make their second album. In one day. Sozzled. Before the first album has even come out. Hic!
The two bros headed up the garden path, armed with the Christmas booze, to fire up the samplers. All they needed now was a plan of attack...
"Let's make a song every five minutes!" shouted Paul, thrusting a triumphant finger in the air to further signal the drama of the idea. It's at that point that a brother is legally allowed to slap you firmly across your chops and demand that you "get a grip". But no, the drink makes you the king of the world and, in good company, these types of demented brain children are given permission to run riot.
So, they looped up beats, waffled lyrics into a dictaphone and laid down the foundations for what would be a trip-hop masterpiece and a massive worldwide commercial success. From little pissed up acorns, eh?
"My main memories from that period are just ones of intense panic. We were out of our minds all the time on various things, and the fact that we were making such peaceful music was bizarre."
Paul Godfrey
"We had to do something," says Paul Godfrey, the beats and lyrics guy from Morcheeba. "We were waiting for our first album to drop, and we'd worked really hard on it and got the record deal and everything, but we were just sat there in limbo, panicking about the whirlwind that was about to follow..."
Paul and his more musically-inclined guitar-strumming, slightly younger brother Ross hadn't been
in London that long before they suddenly got a record deal, you see. "Before we knew it we were out in Hollywood playing to celebrities," says Paul. "We really kind of lost our minds a little bit. There was no kind of 'big calm' surrounding our lives at all. My main memories from that period are just ones of intense panic. We were out of our minds all the time on various things, and the fact that we were making such peaceful music was bizarre. It's probably because we were so hungover most of the time."
The album was a runaway success - their little drunken Christmas present to us all and, more importantly, themselves. It was the album that shook off the Portishead comparisons from their debut, and set out a stall for the more intricate and mature sound (AOR-cheeba?) that they would further develop across the early 2000s with the next three long players. What was to follow may have stormed further up the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, but they owe everything to this one Big Calm that came before it.
The Sea
"This was one we wrote in five minutes on that drunken Christmas Day. It was just drums to start with, then we added a guitar after we came back from the pub. We used to go to the pub every night. We came back hammered and Ross put it down in one take. Then we DI-ed it into the Mackie desk through a wah-wah peddle, and when we mixed it I rolled all the top off it to give it that smooth sound.
"The strings were arranged after by Steve Bentley-Klein, who I met when I was DJing at a party his string quartet were playing at. I didn't know anything about strings in those days so just said, 'Err, can you do some strings for us?'
"[Morcheeba main vocalist] Skye Edwards came up with the melody and gave it that blissed-out feel. The Sea went on to be our biggest song".
A Trip-Hop classic that still sounds amazing and engrossing to this day, I have a lot of affection for Big Calm. Morcheeba are one of these groups that many know about, but I don’t think they got the mainstream attention that their music deserved. Their latest album, Blackest Blue, was released last year. The A.V. Club provided their take on Big Calm in 2002:
“It's amazing how just a few years differentiate innovation from imitation. As soon as Portishead made "trip-hop" a part of pop-music parlance, sneaky slow-beated neophytes began to sprout up like weeds, unable to resist the lure of the cool new cash cow. Morcheeba initially seemed like one of those pale copycat usurpers, but listening to the band's 1996 debut Who Can You Trust? made you quickly realize that it's the real deal. In fact, in some ways, Morcheeba is superior to Portishead: Where Geoff Barrow and Beth Gibbons create bloodless, gothic soundtracks, Morcheeba (brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey and singer Skye Edwards) approaches its music from an acoustic standpoint, utilizing samplers and turntables as embellishment, but primarily building upon a bed of live instrumentation. In this way, Morcheeba isn't worlds apart from the silky soul of Sade; it's just hipped up for contemporary consumption. The group's new Big Calm is even more song-oriented than its debut. "Shoulder Holster" uses sitar and Indian percussion to great effect, bolstering an already sublime hook, while "Blindfold" explores the darker side of Morcheeba's quiet storm. "Friction" is a nice take on reggae that refuses to be pigeonholed as such, and "Over & Over"—a subdued folk song far more reminiscent of Nick Drake than Sneaker Pimps—even abandons beats entirely. All these songs reveal Morcheeba's impressive versatility, stressing songwriting over DJing, and thus ensuring its continued creative success beyond passing fads”.
An album that I was keen to include in Vinyl Corner, the brilliant Big Calm is one that you should own. I was fourteen when the album came out and I remember loving it right away. Aside from The Sea, tracks like Part of the Process stuck in my mind. I listen to the album in its entirety today and it still elicits reactions and emotions. Morcheeba’s 1998 gem of an album is one you need to hear if you are not familiar with it. Just put it on, drop the needle and…
SWIM inside of it.