Bliss band’s Rachel Mor­ri­son and Tom E Mor­ri­son have just rere­leased Believe (Let the Love Shine In), mix 2020. Accom­pa­ny­ing the song is an uplift­ing video cre­at­ed by Tom, enhanced with gor­geous­ly psy­che­del­ic touch­es – and check out those singing sunflowers…

I chat­ted to Rachel about mak­ing the re-release of Believe and the cou­ple’s lock­down projects…

What prompt­ed you to re-record Believe? 
We felt it was the sort of song we all need right now, as we all have so many doubts, fears and unan­swered ques­tions. It wasn’t writ­ten for this time – the orig­i­nal was released on CD on our own label Big Sky Song Records in 2009 – but we felt it was apt. The sen­ti­ment is to find the strength to see that things can, and will, be bet­ter. Acknowl­edge how hard life is and be pro-active about mak­ing life rich­er and more mean­ing­ful, invit­ing the good into our lives to quash the bad stuff.

Has Believe always been one of your favourite songs?
It’s cer­tain­ly been a favourite live song because not only is it cathar­tic to per­form but it rous­es the audi­ence too, and chal­lenges our doubts and fears. It has those gospel-esque qual­i­ties that help us to tran­scend and escape our dark and destruc­tive emotions. 

There’s been a lot of renewed inter­est from Warn­er Music in your work, is this part of that project?
In spring we signed a dis­tri­b­u­tion deal for an album with Warn­er Music Brazil for South and North Amer­i­ca. This album con­sists of remas­tered ver­sions of our favourite tracks from our self-released My World Your World album plus some pre­vi­ous­ly dig­i­tal­ly unre­leased songs. We Are One (also the title of this new album) was cho­sen as the first sin­gle. To cel­e­brate Rock Month in Brazil, Warn­er sug­gest­ed to release Believe as the sec­ond single. 

What changes did you make to the orig­i­nal ver­sion?
We looked at the orig­i­nal album ver­sion arrange­ment and decid­ed to give it a bit more of an edge. I did some new lead vocal takes and re-record­ed all the back­ing vocals. Tom record­ed new gui­tars, bass and key­boards. Edu Bisa Bisog­no, key­board­er in our live band, con­tributed by play­ing his won­der­ful Ham­mond organ. The track also fea­tures fab­u­lous ex Crouch-Ender Marc Lay­ton Ben­nett on drums. 

What’s the sto­ry behind the mak­ing of the video?
We want­ed it to be over the top, slight­ly corny but with the emphat­ic pos­i­tive mes­sage com­ing across. We are lim­it­ed obvi­ous­ly because of lock­down and bud­get so we had to be real­ly cre­ative and use the lim­it­ed resources avail­able to us. Tom decid­ed to have a go at video pro­duc­tion, bought a GoPro Cam­era, a green screen and some lights and learned how to use video edit­ing soft­ware. The We are One video was his first  attempt and some days ago he uploaded Believe (Let The Love Shine In) to our YouTube Chan­nel . It’s naive, play­ful and joy­ous! All of the flow­ers in the video are from the gar­den and the major­i­ty are grown from seed. 

How has lock­down treat­ed you both?
Gar­den­ing has been a main fea­ture of my lock­down. We’ve been blessed with a gar­den, so very ear­ly on we got two lit­tle green­hous­es and sowed loads of veg­etable seeds. We didn’t know how bad it would get, so we want­ed to make sure we had food. That was ther­a­peu­tic as it felt we were tak­ing some con­trol and even if it was just a min­i­mal act, it helped. Also I’m a spe­cial­ist dyslex­ia teacher and there’s been a lot of demand for tutor­ing online. Plus since late June I’ve been paint­ing mad­ly near­ly every day – again it feels as if it gives life some con­trol. It’s a very good dis­trac­tion, like med­i­ta­tion real­ly, but you have pro­duced some­thing at the end to keep or give away. 

Tom has been cre­ative in our pur­pose-built record­ing stu­dio at the back of the gar­den, work­ing on our tracks and writ­ing med­i­ta­tion music (check out his pre­vi­ous releas­es in this genre Sim­ply Med­i­ta­tion – Tom E Mor­ri­son .
He’s also been busy pro­duc­ing tracks for var­i­ous artists (Tom E Mor­ri­son web­site). It has made us realise how impor­tant home is, wher­ev­er that may be – loca­tion is no longer as important.

Web­site https://blissrachelmorrison.com
Insta­gram https://www.instagram.com/blissrachelmorrison/
Face­book https://www.facebook.com/blissrachelmorrison

For more about Bliss:  Inter­view: Bliss are back with a tour and re-release