Fragments of Freedom

Morcheeba follow up the success of 1998's Big Calm with Fragments of Freedom. In a world choked with sound, for the last few years it's been hard to find anything that lingers, anything that grows with you rather than on you, any relationship between audience and artist with that special fidelity that goes beyond infatuation and becomes love. Morcheeba are that rare thing: A band to love but also a band that keeps you guessing, that refuse flatly to co-operate with the safe maxims of stasis and repetition that make so much modern pop so damn predictable. Here is a band with a totally unique relationship with anyone who hears them: perhaps the only band on earth to demand that you expect the unexpected and then actually deliver on that promise.