For The Heck Of It!

06/04/1998 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Mara Schwartz

"M-O-R is 'middle-of-the-road,'" notes mixer/drummer Paul Godfrey, explaining the etymological roots of his band's enigmatic moniker, Morcheeba. "And 'cheeba' is a slang term for marijuana."

That latter part's not too surprising, if the British trio's new release Big Calm is any evidence. On the album, singer Skye's torchy, woozy vocals blend seamlessly with swirly instrumentals created by Paul and his guitarist brother, Ross. They create these inspired sounds by laying down tracks in the studio, which Paul, a former recording engineer, samples and distorts into an altered-consciousness-inspired meld. This is middle-of-the-road?

"I think we are quite middle-of-the-road, yeah," insists Paul. "We have a lot of weird influence, but there's too much music these days that's strictly weird. It's nice to get more even-keel."

Well, if Paul prefers another adjective, there's always diverse: he claims influences from a wide gamut of musical genres ("Hip-hop from the '80s, funk from the '70s, blues from the '30s, '40s and '50s, jazz from the whole time," he lists). But his pet styles have one thing in common: they're all associated with the good ol' US of A. "There's an honesty in American music that we really relate to," Paul says, comparing it with sounds from his native land. "Music in America tends to have a life on its own rather than what the journalists predict for it." But none of the young three had visited our soil until 1997, admitting that most of their impressions of our land came from TV-show imports like Columbo ("I see a van," says Paul of his visit here, "and I think, 'I bet they've kidnapped a child!'"). And they claim to be too preoccupied with making music to worry about what America thinks of them, although they have faith that Morcheeba's trippy sound will soon catch on with the Yanks.

"What we do is so genuine," says Paul. "If we get played to genuine people through radio and stuff, it's gonna spread like wildfire."