CityLife

Interview: Groove Armada

Groove Armada

“We’re the least recognisable men in modern music, people don’t often connect the band to the songs. It’s a problem.”

Oh dear. Tom Findlay, one half of veteran London dance duo Groove Armada, appears to be having an identity crisis.

Together with Andy Cato, Findlay has enjoyed over 10 years of chart success thanks to a succession radio-friendly anthems and ubiquity among advertisers.

Goalposts, however, have changed in the three years since GA’s last album and it has left Findlay questioning where new record, Black Light, which Findlay says is designed to ‘show some darkness’, leaves his band in the eyes of the public.

“It’s been a long time in the making – too long really. It’s a departure, a completely different sound.

“We’re in an unfamiliar place: we’re not on a major label, and we’ve travelled from what we normally do. So there has been lots of self-doubt, steps forward then steps backwards. We wanted to get to a certain place and push it on.

“We can try other stuff now we’re not on a major. Majors are only interested in radio hits, that’s how they function as a business. This album doesn’t have any, so we haven’t had A-list treatment. But we’re still looking to strike a chord with people.”

He may be downbeat about the record’s commercial chances, but its artistic merit is without question: Black Light represents a career high, leaving behind coffee-table mush and what would once have been called ‘banging anthems’ in favour of something with more substance. As he says himself, it’s ‘quite a way from that 90s thing that we used to be’.

The album’s rough-edged, less-is-more electronica has the comedown rather than the club in mind, aided by some stellar guest slots from Will Young (“he’s our sort of bloke, he likes a party”), taken out of his comfort zone to provide a stunning falsetto to the high camp, Bronski Beat-esque History, and most illustriously Roxy Music man Bryan Ferry, who adds trademark sophisticated grandeur to album highlight Shameless.

“We never thought it was going to happen,’ Findlay admits. ‘It coincided with a period where he had been struggling to write, sort of wilderness years.

“He was up for Roxy Music again, and anything else he thought was good, really.

“It took a while, and we thought we’d have to leave it. He got it to us just in time, and it’s a cracker.’

It is also probably not what casual GA fans are expecting, and is a world away from 1999 breakthrough album Vertigo, whose chill-out vibes garnered dubious endorsement from Tony Blair.
Yet before even that, almost inevitably for ravers of a certain age, the GA story began here in Manchester, where Findlay studied at university.

“I didn’t do a lot of work,” he laughs. “The Hacienda was up and running and in a good state. For about a year I went every week religiously, like loads of other people.

“It made me realise I could do music for a living.

“Manchester is a big part of GA, it’s our second home. We love coming up, doing the Warehouse. We did Sankeys when it was really rolling. It’s still going on now, Hurts and Everything Everything are both amazing.

“We need to get back to that independent way of thinking, how to find our own space again.

“We’re not doing the big dance music, the stuff Calvin Harris is doing, we’re not interested in that anymore. So we’ve got to convince people to come with us.”

Groove Armada play The Ritz on March 2, 2010.