Groove Armada

Duo Andy Cato and Tom Findlay bring Groove Armada into year 2010 with a new album, new line-up and new optimism. Music-news.com caught up with them prior to their London Forum show for an exclusive chat.


Music-News.com: Any surprises in the set tonight?

Andy: It’s a whole new show, the Black Light live gig,we’ve got this whole new sensational platform? So yeah we’ve totally reinvented our set.

MN: With the album out and all the collaborations, which collaboration is your personal favourite and why?

Tom: The Bryan Ferry thing was amazing, it made a lot of sense the sounds he was referencing and now he’s doing Lovebox, that’s kind of lovely cos it feels like a little bit of history doing that.

Becky (aka Saint Saviour) coming out on the road with us and fronting up the band,that’s been the most special thing to have happened with this one.

Andy: She’s (Becky) become an integral part, she’s one of the performers of her generation, she’s been revelation,the question after we play is always 'who’s that girl’, she’s quite something so that’s the sort of relationship that’s totally transformed the way we can do our live gigs, it’s much more punky and rock 'n’ roll and stripped back. It’s great for us this year cos in Australia we were playing in front of 30,000 people and in some places we only played for 500 and having her to build that new sound was key.

MN: Different people in the front and a new member of the family,how does that change and how long will this format go on?

Tom: Well particularly the crew we’ve worked with hasn’t really changed much over the last ten years,the performers have moved around a little bit but the guitarist and drummer have been with us for about 5 years so Becky is the only real new girl this time round.

It’s been great, I imagine we’ll probably keep this rolling until the tour cycle is out, probably towards the end of this year. We’ll keep going through the summer, do a few festivals and knock it on the head sometime around December.

MN: Ben Duffy from Fenech Soler is supporting how’s that going?

Andy: They’re doing lots of gigs with us; they’re great lads, a really talented band. They know what they’re doing live, they’re great performers, and he’s got a great voice and joins us on 'Paper romance’ which is one of the tunes off the new album, which is turning into a bit of an anthem.

So 'a’ we’re getting great support and 'b’getting a great singer and his amazingly glittery jacket?

MN: Your tour is going overseas to the US,is this the first time you are performing there?

Tom: It’s the first time in a long time, we went out there for a couple of tours when we first started,we’ve done one-off gigs like a couple of years ago but in terms of putting a show together, this is the first time in about 4 or 5 years. So it’s really exciting, we’re working with an independent label over there, who are working really hard for us.

It feel’s exciting, that’s been the great thing with this record generally, there’s been lot’s of markets opened up for us that we’ve never really had before, like Germany, a TV show in France and stuff in the States,for some reason it’s had a global reach, which is a good thing, it makes it much more interesting for us.

Andy: It’s always nice to be over there, there was a while at the beginning when we were being taken around LA and we were doing DJ gigs were we’d arrive in an open topped aeroplane and all kinds of crazy stuff,we seemed to stop going to America when George Bush became president, but I don’t know if that was a coincidence or not.

But now as Tom said we’re working with a new label, we’re selling out faster and we’re number one in various iTunes charts in the states this week so it feels good.

MN: With Bacardi releasing your EP do you see this as a template for a lot of bands in the future?

Tom: I think there’s a hole to be filled by the fact people not spending same amount of money on records the way they used to so someone needs to come up with money to keep this whole thing rolling. For certain people it works well,some of the record label stuff seems really interesting. There’s a good way and bad way of doing these things but if it’s done with integrity then I think it’s a totally decent thing to do and can see it being a big part of the future.

Like with Lovebox, I would say of the 9 tents we’ll have on site this year, 6 of them will carry a sponsors logo,that’s how we make it work,that’s how we keep our heads above water.

MN: How much time does Lovebox take out of your lives?

Tom: It’s quite hard to tell,on the talent spotting side we do quite a lot of work on that, more than actually being in the office all day, but it’s constantly on my mind, which is a nice thing.

MN: Yeah it’s a great festival,I heard you mentioned that MGMT were an inspiration on the new album, in what way do you mean?

Andy: It wasn’t a direct thing but at the time we were listening to old stuff like Bowie, Gary Newman and Roxy music, some drum and bass,and we saw a couple of Friendly Fires gigs and in particular the first half of the MGMT album is absolutely brilliant,we saw a couple of bits of Passion Pit here and there. There was a general thing that they had going on there, which is what we’ve been doing on stage for a long time, which is when musicians and electronics combine, just as there is on the Newman and Bowie stuff we were listening to and we thought it’s something we’ve been doing for a long time so let’s make a record like that.

MN: You played the big day out and brought the album release date forward in Australia for that,what do you expect festival wise this summer?

Tom: Well we’re not doing Lovebox this year, we’ve already decided to have a sabbatical,of course we’ll be there but we won’t be playing live.

Andy: We’re probably going to be at Glastonbury, Tea in the Park, definitely V most of the UK festivals and a lot of European festivals. We’re going to be residents on the Space Terrace in Ibiza again on Sundays and do a few more things in Ibiza so between all this I think a lot of long weekends continuously between May and September.

MN: A while back you were talking about possibly winding up Groove Armada, so was that just a phase, is that over or is it something that may happen in the not so distant future?

Andy: Well at some point we’re going to keel over so,I think we were very frustrated at the time with the whole major label stuff and there became a point when it was a bit too much and it was driving us mad but it’s been great on this record working with different independent labels all over the world and people just really love the music.

When we were working in Australia for example, it was just really infectious, the people just love it and they’ll go the extra yard for you all the time. The responses live and on the GA side over the last couple of days people buying the album have been amazing so that goes a long way in terms or re-energising.

MN: So are you enjoying it as much as you ever have?

Tom: Yes, probably more in a way. Making an album that gets critical approval and that were really proud of you is great. In some ways it’s a bit more nerve racking now, you don’t have that safety blanket of a major, it’s us more than ever making the decisions so it’s a bit stressful but when it rolls like it has been recently it’s great.

MN: So the decision making process, one says one thing, one says another, who wins most of the time?

Tom: We’re quite good at finding common minds with people, when it all comes down to it I think we’re good at making compromises.