Morcheeba
Big Calm

A decidedly nostalgic attitude that I have these days has led me to delve into my memories (more than usual at least), to seek out places (physical or mental) that I haven't frequented in a long time. This is how I came back to an album from 1998, which I bought on a school trip when, still fifteen, my musical horizons hadn't yet fully formed, and I was musically omnivorous (still am, actually) and especially hungry and determined to own every album that contained that song on MTV that I liked so much at the time... It could have been the Chemical Brothers, Chumbawamba, Bluvertigo, or Scisma, it didn't really matter, I really listened to everything. In that climate of musical personality absence, I bought "Big Calm" by Morcheeba (when Skye was still singing with them), which I now find myself reviewing.

I don't know the Londoners apart from this album and from a few past singles that played over the years on TV and radio (tracks I never quite digested), but I liked this album a lot back then, and still now, listening to it again, I can only confirm this impression.

We are in the territory of a trip-hop adulterated with sometimes ethereal, dreamy, Eastern-influenced, and soft sounds, other times more "urban" and funky. There's always a reference point, the voice of Skye Edwards, a singer endowed with a warm and enveloping tone, reassuring and alluring, capable of relaxing you from the very first notes of the opening "The Sea", a great single that, I remember, often played on TV alongside others.

Inserts of diverse nature often blend uniquely, fluidly, and continuously, with sitar and various scratches/samples, acoustic guitars, a rhythmic section sometimes more jazzy, sometimes more in the background, and more.

The best tracks? The aforementioned "The Sea", "Shoulder Holster", "Blindfold" (another great single with a fantastic atmosphere), the more lively "Let Me See", the acoustic lullaby "Over And Over", the reggae-like experiment of "Friction", the sugary "Fear And Love".

A seductive album, not a masterpiece of its genre, yet fascinating, capable of soothing and lightening, for a moment, the weight of a day. Give it a listen, if only to relive a fragment of musical life from 1998!