Forget labels, just dance to Morcheeba

By STEPHEN JEWELL

South London trio Morcheeba released their first album, Who Can You Trust, in 1996 at the height of the Massive Attack and Portishead-led trip hop scene. However, Morcheeba - brothers Paul and Ross Godfrey and vocalist Skye Edwards - have always distanced themselves from the much-maligned and now forgotten dance sub-genre.

"The reason why we disliked the label trip-hop was that we thought it was a lot more than that," says Edwards, on the phone from her Brighton home.

"Certainly our first single Trigger Hippy had elements similar to trip-hop but it was a bit deeper than that. There wasn't really one word that you could use to describe the style of music that we did. There still isn't. People call it pop music or rock music or hip-pop, whatever. It gets confusing because there are so many different crossovers in our music like blues and slide guitar."

Morcheeba's appeal transcends any dance music ghetto with their first three albums, Who Can You Trust, Big Calm and Fragments of Freedom each selling in excess of three million copies while last year's fourth LP, Charango, has proved just as popular.

Charango is Morcheeba's best effort to date, although Edwards is reluctant to agree.

"Each album is my favourite when it first comes out because it's new," she says. "It's got new songs on there which we can go out and perform live. But I think we've done really well on Charango. My singing's a lot better than it was when we first started and there's some good melodies on there."

Charango also featured some intriguing guest vocalists in the shape of rappers Slick Rick and Pace Won and Kurt Wagner, who lends his his dulcet tones to What New York Couples Fight About.

According to Edwards, Slick Rick, who at the time of recording had just been released from jail for shooting his cousin, is rapping with his tongue in his cheek when he talks about killing his overweight wife on Women Lose Weight.

"I remember when I first heard it, I was like Ross, are we allowed to have this on the album?" says Edwards, laughing. "I thought that people are going to be offended by this but, at the same time, I really liked the track and thought it was quite funny. Paul was like, 'We didn't write it anyway and you've got to have a bit of controversy sometimes'.

"The majority of people like it. They get the humour in it and a lot of women have come up to me and said that they like the track.

"I didn't actually get to meet Slick Rick but the guys said he was really nice. He had his eye- patch on, although there's apparently nothing wrong with his eye. And Paul said that he was wearing this diamond-encrusted watch just to show him that he owned a watch that probably cost as much as Paul's house. It was exciting to have a rapper on the album. It brings a whole new dimension to our music."

Charango will be the last Morcheeba album for the foreseeable future as all members are working on solo projects.

"We're going to take a break from Morcheeba," says Edwards. Ross is going to do a guitar instrumental thing with a male singer, and Paul is a hip hop DJ who has always got his fingers in a few pies, so he'll probably be producing other artists.

"I've got a whole bunch of songs that I've written since before I joined Morcheeba and stuff that I've written since, so I'll be working on my own album."

Edwards promises that Morcheeba's shows in New Zealand this week won't be as laidback as the albums.

"We play about 20 songs from all four albums and we generally try and keep it upbeat. We speed up a few of the tempos. Not much, but it's more rocking that the albums. We like to get people up dancing, jumping about and clapping."

* Morcheeba play Auckland's St James Theatre on Tuesday April 22, Wellington Town Hall Thursday April 24 and Christchurch Town Hall April 25