Paul Godfrey
Paul and Ross Godfrey aka Morcheeba were the pioneers of downtempo, the architects of trip-hop, the masterminds behind records that have now sold over five million copies.
Morcheeba released their first album Who Can You Trust in 1996. Big Calm, released two years later, saw their profile soar worldwide as they defined a new blend of soul, hip-hop, country and electronica. Its follow up, Fragments Of Freedom (2000), took a more poppy approach, while Charango (2002) saw them collaborate with the likes of Lamb chop’s Kurt Wagner and legendary rap artist Slick Rick. Parts Of The Process, a Greatest Hits album followed in 2003, as well as a live DVD – From Brixton To Beijing – that contained documentary footage of their groundbreaking tour of China.
Their newest release, 'The Antidote' is the sound of a band challenging and reinventing themselves without losing touch with the history and sound that they innovated.Hello. Thanks very much for taking the time out to have a chat with Camel Audio. Could you introduce yourself?
Hello Tim, yes my Name is Paul Godfrey I am Producer/Writer from the Group Morcheeba, I am 34 years old and have been making records for 16 years.
How did you get into writing music and being in the band Morcheeba?
I started out as a hip hop scratch DJ and also dabbled in playing the drums, my younger brother Ross (the other half of Morcheeba) played mean blues guitar from an early age so we always collaborated in bands and things. I had a small bedroom studio as a kid and used to trigger a delay line with an 808 and record to a cassette 4 track. When I left school, I worked at a jingle studio and then at a 24 track recording studio where I learned to engineer and gain the confidence to make real records. I could already see that most people using the studio were wasting time and money and I approached Ross about forming our own professional project and building a small studio of our own. Not long after we both moved to London, signed on the dole and pursued a record deal. The first track we recorded with a singer called Skye was also the first track we had ever recorded as Morcheeba; it was called "Trigger Hippie" and it immediately gained us a record deal and massive underground rotation. We thought we had arrived, it was great being that naïve but things were to change so much during our early career, the biggest being the digital audio workstation revolution. At first I was not keen on hard disk recording as it sounded so bad when up against our lovely 2" inch tape and didn't sound as gritty as my old Akai S950's but slowly the quality increased, we climbed the steep learning curve and now fully appreciate the best of both worlds. Our studio is a combination of vintage 50's, 60's and 70's outboard with a Pro Tools HD system and Prism and Apogee converters running plug ins for beat production etc.
What projects have you used Camel Audio software on?
I have been using Cameleon for about 8 months now and have loved using it on the new Morcheeba album.
What do you like most about Cameleon 5000?
First of all, I am a big fan of happy accidents so I like to be able to flick through options as fast as I can and get something I hadn't previously envisioned. I like to bring a strong random element into our music where machines are concerned; otherwise its all "rock typing" and no magic.
With Cameleon it is so easy to get an amazing futuristic sound without hours of mind numbing programming. It also seems to groove extremely well so I can snake musical changes around the other drum programming easily using the rhythmic mode. I also love morphing new sounds together and getting the satisfaction of creating something wholly unique. I do not use many digital plug ins and Cameleon is definitely in my top 3 for making fresh, new, groundbreaking sounds.
What are your plans for the next year?
To promote the new Morcheeba record and continue touring the world, whilst finding time to share with my beautiful young family and still create new musical ideas.
