From the angelic ‘Repay the Saviour’ to the dream pop of ‘Hold On’ and the psychedelic rock of ‘Feet First’, the eponymous album Skye & Ross is a delight from start to finish. Some may have thought they had been washed up on the shores of chilled trip-hop back after they had experienced significant success, starting with seminal trip-hop single ‘Trigger Hippie’. A fixture of the singles and album charts from the mid-90s to the early 00s, the band (made up of the brothers Ross and Paul Godfrey), parted ways with Skye Edwards, who embarked on a solo career, before re-joining the band in 2010. However, Morcheeba came to a head when the brothers Godfrey fell out following the release of Head Up High in 2013. Since then Ross and Skye have forged a fruitful musical partnership, under their own names. They played Love Supreme Festival in July, released their self-titled debut album last month and are about to undertake a tour of the UK. Singer Skye Edwards took some time out to answer a few questions.

How’s it going and where are you?

I’m in the kitchen, standing over the stove. I’m making a curry today!

Smells good! And then what?

We are off to Prague tomorrow, to play Sazava festival. We are doing just the one show.

I saw you play Love Supreme Festival in July. How was that?

It was good. I felt we were very well received, a nice crowd. It felt like people were happy to see us. We played a mixture of Morcheeba songs and Skye & Ross songs.

I remember seeing Morcheeba play at the old Concorde (where the terraces are now) and I think you were living in Brighton at the time…

I did! I moved to Southwick for three years but we did a lot of travelling and a lot of driving on the M25. There were a whole load of accidents on the M25, and I thought ‘you know what? I don’t want to live in Brighton anymore. I want to be a bit closer to London’. We moved to Kingston for a few years and then basically moved homes according to where the kids went to school. We’re now in Surrey.

Tell me about the album…

Initially we thought we were going to make an acoustic album. As the songs grew and Ross developed them, we thought the songs would sound great with drums. It took us back to the time we were by the side of the stage and we watched Gary Clark Junior and we loved the energy of his band. We thought we would like to do something like that. When we play live it’s a lot more guitar-heavy, we speed up the tempos more, and the drums are live rather than programmed. So we thought, why don’t we capture what we do live on the record and that’s what we did.

You’ve got another child, a one-year-old-daughter. Did she play a part in the recording!?

I was heavily pregnant at the time when we wrote the first song 'Clear My Mind' and then we did a couple gigs in Russia. And my daughter came three months early. That was a very frightening experience. I felt she was going to come early by a few weeks, but not a few months. A week before she came I was on stage in my six-inch heels and sparkly trousers. We were supposed to go to Romania, but luckily we were at home when it happened and I managed to get myself to hospital. The song ‘Hold On’ is inspired by that. It was the wrong time, but the right place.

Is she ok?

She’s fine. She’s 15 months old now. She’s a little bit behind, but by the age of two she should be on the same level as most children. I had never seen a baby so small! They see it all the time (at the hospital). But she was the size of an iPhone but with little arms and legs sticking out!

She is child number four…

Yeah. My son (Jaega) is on drums with us. He’s 20. I was pregnant with him when we recorded the Who Can You Trust album (Morcheeba’s debut album). All of the children have been on tour with us, travelled with us up to school age. For the first four years of their life their education is aeroplanes and tour buses. When we came to needing a new drummer Ross suggested Jaega. He’d only been playing for two-and-a-half years. ‘Are you out of you mind?’ I was 18 when I first started in Morcheeba, let’s give him a chance. My husband, Steve, who plays bass in the band, got him in the garage for about three months. He knew the songs, but we got him in there every day.

Taking to it like his Mum?

His first gig was in Argentina in front of 1,000 people, and he killed it. He’s a natural. It still blows my mind. I couldn’t look at him for the first few months of touring, on stage. I was too nervous. It’s finding the balance between me being a parent, him being my bandmate and not wanting to embarrass him in front of people. ‘Jag, don’t you think you should be getting in bed now?!’ But letting him stay up ’til 4am. That was a weird one. ‘Jag, I’m off to bed now, are you sure you’re going to have that beer now?’ But, it’s just brilliant.

How do you cope, being a touring musician and that?

People say how do you juggle. I say it’s just like any parent, really. You have to find child care, you have to work. I guess I am lucky in that sometimes I can take the kids to work with me. But it’s only for that time we are on stage that they need looking after. It’s normal for them to be on an aeroplane. The youngest one did brilliantly; we flew to Italy, and then we went to Istanbul, and then to Hungary, and then a three hour drive… When we do our soundcheck I put her on a little backpack with ear plugs. She’s just found a raisin and put it in her ear….

You write most of the lyrics on this album…

Ross sent over this acoustic fingerpicking guitar line for the first song we worked on, ‘Clear My Mind’, and I listened to it over and over and I came up with a melody. And then a few days later I came up with the lyrics. Originally we thought we would get someone in to collaborate on lyrics. I’d written lyrics for my solo record, but Paul was the lyricist for Morcheeba. Ross really liked the lyrics, and we went from there. We just thought we could do this ourselves, even the production. Ross was more than capable.

Sometimes the lyrics are personal, at other times the words just come from listening to the melody. The first time I did my solo record I worked with Pat Leonard and I tried to hum the melody, and he would say, ‘rather than hum why don’t you just say the words, whatever words come into your head’. If you do that over and over, the idea for the song comes from that. I really don’t know how it works, but you work it out afterwards. ‘Oh, that’s what the song means’!

So, why aren’t you using the Morcheeba name?

It’s complicated (she mimics in an American accent). Paul left the band in 2014. He wanted a million pounds as a pay off which we didn’t have. ‘OK, we’re not using the name’. This record is a representation of who we are, Skye and Ross. It’s been like that for her the last 15 years. Since I rejoined the band in 2010, Paul hasn’t toured with us. Before the split in 2003 we had a different scratch DJ; he wasn’t really happy on tour. He hated the tour bus, aeroplanes, so he decided to be the studio guy. So, as far as touring goes, it’s the same. We’ve removed the scratch DJ, there’s no scratching on the record. It’s not something that we miss. Morcheeba is no more as it stands.

Why did you go back to Morcheeba in 2010?

They asked me to come back. But I was touring the Keeping Secrets album, on my own label, I was quite happy. I was reluctant to return, but I did thanks to my husband, he said‘you should go back, it will be be good for the legacy of Morcheeba’ – it’s been good. I was so reluctant but I was glad I did. I was able to re-connect with Ross, and have a lot of fun on stage. He’s an awesome guitar player and incredibly generous.

Jeff Hemmings