Customer Reviews

Parts of the Process-Best of

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Lit up by Skye Edwards' soulfully effervescent vocals and its infectious, sing-along chorus, Morcheeba's Rome Wasn't Built in a Day is one of the most damnably catchy songs I have heard in this millennium, and the accompanying video - which you can currently see on YouTube - is a cheerful, montage-driven match to its romantic uplift. Discovering this UK band well after Edwards' departure, I was delighted to find this best-of compilation recently. Organized by the Godfrey brothers - Ross on guitar and keyboards and Paul on "beats and scratches" - the band was one of the leaders of the "trip hop" movement in the mid-90's, a down-tempo electronic music sound borne out of the club scene in Bristol. This disc covers Morcheeba's first eight years up until 2003 right before Edwards left, a big loss for the brothers since her voice has a distinctive, lustrous world-music quality that would be hard to match for style.

Fortunately, we have these eighteen tracks with Edwards for posterity. Most have a loping ambient quality like the trance-laden "The Sea", the hypnotic "Blindfold", the samba-sized "Let Me See" and the twangy "Part of the Process", all from the band's best-selling breakthrough 1998 disc, Big Calm. You can hear a mellow, radio-friendly pop sound pervading the later tracks like "Otherwise", "Undress Me Now" and "Way Beyond" from 2002's Charango. Rapper Big Daddy Kane joins in on the robotically hip-hop "What's Your Name?", and Kurt Wagner of the alternative country band Lambchop duets with Edwards on the hallucinogenic trance, "What New York Couples Fight About". My favorite tracks are from 2002's Fragments of Freedom - the beat-happy "Be Yourself" and of course, "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day". Especially with Edwards at the forefront, Morcheeba is a band worth discovering or rediscovering on this side of the Atlantic if you have an affinity for chill-out music.

Good enough just for showcasing most of Morcheeba's sound on a single album.

Most of the times, it happens that compilations lack a couple of good songs that for any reason are not included on the track selection but, however, they still work fine for drawing a full picture of the artist's work. That's the case of "Parts of the Process": it may work fine for those willing to listen to Morcheeba for the first time but, at the same time, it may also disappoint the true followers as it remains incomplete, like most compilations do...

Worth the money if you're a Morcheeba new-comer willing to widen your horizon by opening it to some chill-out moods, but you won't really find a whole lot of new stuff if already a loyal fan.