About a year ago I received the Skye | Ross album that I signed up for at Pledge Music, a site that I’ve used several times since and will talk about a bit more later. The version I received is in a bright orange vinyl and the inside cover is signed by both Skye Edwards & Ross Godfrey who are two thirds of Morcheeba. In fact, this is basically Morcheeba under a different name as the third member, Paul Godfrey, can’t be convinced to tour and the album productions for which he was responsible were becoming increasingly difficult to reproduce live.
Light Of Gold was released as the first single from the album. For the filming of the video they reached out on social media to find a cute couple to feature. The video was shot in Sibenik, Croatia. Here it is:
I remember seeing the video for ‘Trigger Hippie’ way back in 1996 and was absolutely enthralled by it, to the point that I went out and bought the CD, to then discover Tape Loop, both these tracks, for me, are total brilliance. Skye’s voice is so laid back, and so wonderful and, genuinely, seeing her sing brings me tremendous joy.
This new album is simpler than recent productions but it is still instantly identifiable, albeit not under the Morcheeba name anymore. It is full of good songs though, and it is consistent throughout, flowing from song to song quite naturally. I think it fair to say I am somewhat biased though as I adore Skye. One of the reasons is demonstrated in the video below, just Skye singing along to an acoustic guitar with no production embellishments or trickery on her vocal, and it is beautiful:
Tracklist
A1 Repay The Saviour – 2:13
A2 Light Of Gold – 3:34
A3 All My Days – 4:32
A4 How To Fly – 3:16
A5 Clear My Mind – 2:57
B1 Hold On – 4:29
B2 Medicine – 3:16
B3 Feet First – 5:23
B4 Head Home – 2:03
B5 The Point Of No Return – 6:18
I’m giving this an 8.6 which is a high mark for, what is, a very good album.
Now then, on to different matters, as promised, Pledge Music. I started using Pledge Music as a way to support new and emerging artists and those that were working on re-vitalising their careers by removing record company control and doing things for themselves. So far I have supported Zola Blood, Gary Numan, Skye | Ross, Lamb and Elsa Hewitt. I still pop on there every month or so and have a trawl around looking for interesting things and, when something catches my interest, I invest a bit of money in it. It is basically a Kickstarter for music.
Recently I’ve felt a little disillusioned with it. Why? Well, do the Beatles or the Rolling Stones need my money up front to help them get an album out? Do Black Sabbath? I’d say not but there seem to be an increasing number of occurrences where bands who really don’t need to use Pledge do so as a either a pre-order or marketing tool. There are some who have not even gone through the pledge process but have, instead, just made an album immediately available to order. I could be entirely wrong about all this but for me the spirit of the site is being diminished by all this behavior and I will probably be spending an increasing amount of time on Bandcamp instead.
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