Album Review: Morcheeba – Escape the Chaos
3 min read
Celebrating over three decades in music, Morcheeba returns with their eleventh studio album, Escape the Chaos, released via 100% records. Their 11th studio album, Escape the Chaos, which features contributions from Skye Edwards’ family and guest features like rapper Oscar #Worldpeace and Amanda Zamolo, hopes to reaffirm the band’s place as masters of fusing trip-hop roots with acoustic textures, Latin rhythms, with an underpinning of smooth electronica… let’s get into it!!
The first single release, Call For Love, opens the album with lush, downtempo grooves and Skye Edwards’ soulful voice, setting a groovy, yet serene, tone to the track. Following up, Elephant Clouds feels like I was listening to one of the better tracks from their seminal album Big Calm – as bigger of a compliment as you can get, whilst Peace of Me (the latest release) features rapper Oscar #Worldpeace, is a heavier groove when rapping, intertwined with ethereal moments when Skye sings – great stuff. The final release (so far) is next up, and We Live and Die is a great down tempo track in a fine combination of orchestral sounds with trip-hop underpinning the whole track – a return to pure Morcheeba – and this continues through Far We Come in a down tempo track which is both current and wouldn’t be out of place in their 1996 debut album.
Starting off with an almost spaghetti western swing to it, Molten is different enough to not think ‘more of the same’ – a very well placed track in the album IMO. Bleeding Out starts out a little bland, but is full on (as full on as down tempo trip-hop can get), and this saves the track from being a bit beige, whilst Cooler Heads gives me early Goldfrapp feels in the distortive musical arrangement, with great scratching over the top and no vocals from Skye, but another fantastic track, fantastically placed. Hold It Down sees the return of Sky’s dulcet tones in this more up tempo track, whilst Dead To Me has a bossa nova feel to in, in what feels the most stylistically detached song on the album, though thematically I think they mesh well –it still works! Penultimate track Pareidolia sees Amanda Zamolo join in on a track which gives me the feel of late 1970’s nocturnal inner city landscapes, meshed with trip-hop undertones, whilst title track Escape the Chaos rounds off the album in style, with a moody, cinematic quality down tempo track which is the perfect way to round off the album.
Escape the Chaos is an album, not two or three solid tracks with 9 fillers… it’s an album. Quality from start to end – yes some tracks are stronger than others, and I must admit that my skip finger got itchy a few times, but it was as if the album knew this, and switched things up at exactly the right time. This is as good an album as their seminal work from the late 1990’s, and I, for one, and fully on board with this release. the full album has been downloaded, and it will remain so – I can offer no higher praise.
