Things I picked up in Ireland/Morcheeba

I’m a big fan of buying music I normally wouldn’t listen to in other countries. For some reason, that distance seems to make things normally boring and unpalatable into something interesting. It also forces me to broaden my tastes and not just write off entire genres. I like having something of everything. So when I went to Ireland for a couple weeks about 4 years ago, I picked up everything I could (especially the beer, since I was under the drinking age back in the states). I came back with a lot of dance, pop, and eletronica- things totally foreign to the rest of my music collection.

The bigs hits while I was there were Robbie William’s Rock DJ, Madison Avenue’s Don’t Call Me Baby, and other listenable, tongue in cheek dance pop tunes. My favorite (as well my little sister’s) was Morcheeba’s Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day. It’s poppy, fun and sweet and gets stuck in your head. Morcheeba, as I’ve since found out, is a trio that seems to defy cateorization. After getting Fragments of Freedom, which is a great album all in the same vein as Rome, I picked up Who Can You Trust? and Beats & B-sides, both with their own flavours, but both decidely more mellow, jazzy and smooth. It’s the sort of thing I’d reccommend as a starter set to trip/trance/pop styles on account of its accesibility, without me knowing much at all about those genres. They don’t rely on jarring or dischordant sounds, like a lot of the trance stuff I’ve heard. The song I’ve picked out from Who Can You Trust? is the oddity on the album, with horns and strings and is probably the most interesting track, music-wise, though not very representational. The rest is a little bit more electronica, though similar in tone and variation within the song.

But, as usual, you get to judge for yourself. And feel free to tell me things I don’t know about this group, or the genres involved, because while I admit my lack of knowledge, I still want to know. I like music, ya know.

Morcheeba – Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day [purchase Fragments of freedom]
Morcheeba – Col [purchase Who Can You Trust]

I really reccommend Glenn’s mix CD, even though I already have my own Jetsetting CD. It’s called Frank Sinatra’s Come Fly With Me. XD