Interview: Groove Armada

Published on Sunday 21 February 2010 11:45

NOT many bands take 12 years to make their best album. But Andy Cato and Tom Findlay, better known as the captains of Groove Armada, have managed just that. Black Light is their sixth record, and the one of which the giants of 1990s dance music are most proud. It is also, I discover, their last.

"I think it's the best one we've done and a nice way to finish," says Cato, at home in the south of France, where he moved from Barcelona a year ago. He spotted a dilapidated barn that would make "a killer studio", moved the cows out and his equipment in.

"The days of the album are numbered," he continues. "I say that with a heavy heart because here I am, in a room surrounded by thousands of albums. Now we'll probably focus on the live shows and release EPs around them. That seems like the way to go."

Over in north London, near the park where the duo's dance festival Lovebox is held every year, Findlay explains why Black Light feels like the beginning of a new era. "When we started out no-one was even making dance albums," he says. "Now you have this overwhelming dance scene, from Dizzee Rascal rapping over electronic beats to Calvin Harris going back to the 1990s and the whole indie dance thing. We had to find a space in that.

"I think maybe the albums we've done in the past have tried to be all things to all people. With this record we've been more confident and less compromising. We don't know how much longer we're going to be doing this and there's an element of going back to our roots. Making this record was a more intense, emotionally involved experience. When you're on a major label you don't own the record. This time we own it."

Black Light is Groove Armada's first album since leaving Sony BMG. Following a brief experiment signing to a corporate drinks brand – Bacardi – last year, Groove Armada have finally ducked back underground. They've signed to an independent and brought on board a host of up and coming collaborators, alongside the requisite big names. Black Light features Empire of the Sun's Nick Littlemore, Will Young and Bryan Ferry, who supplies his first ever guest vocal to the spare and slow-burning Shameless. But Cato discovered vocalist Jess Larabee on MySpace and their new frontwoman, SaintSaviour, who has a dance vocal that could shatter disco balls and the wardrobe to match, is a virtual unknown. As Groove Armada's main vocalist, she will now be playing to tens of thousands of people all over the world.

"Jess (Larabee] had made a couple of albums in her New York apartment with her boyfriend," explains Cato. "They're kind of a reverse White Stripes. She has an incredible voice, so I sent her some tracks. It turns out her mum was a disco dancer at Studio 54 and she's really into her dance music.

"And SaintSaviour is amazing, right up there with the performers of her generation. She's a complete natural. Offstage she keeps herself to herself, but as soon as she walks out into the lights she becomes this persona. It's quite something to see."

Cato bonded with Will Young on Ibiza's dancefloors and a Bronski Beat-esque track, History, that he wrote for Young's album, ended up on Black Light. What about Bryan Ferry? "I feel shocked and awed that we got him first," admits Findlay. "To be a little part of his history makes me very proud. We had a few dinners with him and it became clear that he's in the process of getting back in the studio. The Roxy Music phenomenon is on its way back. We were lucky to get him when we did."

The lean, indie-punk influence of bands who brought guitars back to the dancefloor like MGMT, Friendly Fires and Klaxons is all over Black Light. The months spent listening to Bowie, Gary Numan and Roxy Music on the tour bus nudged their way on to the record as well. Black Light may not be spearheading a new sound but it is a departure for a dance act better known as masters of hands-in-the-air house and, in recent years, for providing the blissed-out-on-olive-oil soundtrack to adverts that crooned "this isn't just food, it's M&S food". The song the advert used, At The River, was Groove Armada's very first single. It came to be one of the most overplayed tunes of its generation, popping up on every Back To Mine or Late Night-style album to spawn a whole new genre: the chill-out compilation.

Those days appear to be over. Black Light is a darker and more intense offering, about as far away from soundtracking food porn as you can get. Do they regret the decision to sell some of their back catalogue to the advertising industry?

"Not really," says Findlay. "We weren't Massive Attack, writing this intense paranoiac music, you know? We were writing 'I see you baby, shaking that ass…' It's not rocket science."

He sniggers and then gets serious. "There are moments like At The River that I regret because people emotionally invested in that tune. With the benefit of hindsight we probably wouldn't have done that one. It came along at a time when we weren't sure what we were doing next. It's a shame." When they play the song now at gigs, Findlay admits that it doesn't feel the same. "It's a sharply edited version and it's all over in about 30 seconds," he notes.

For Cato, Black Light is very much a product of their changing live shows. "We closed Glastonbury a few years ago with the full show, proper big production stuff," he says, harking back to a time when dance acts such as Chemical Brothers and Leftfield would play to tens of thousands against a backdrop of spaced-out visuals that wouldn't even make today's mobile screensavers. And the days when turntables outsold guitars have long gone.

"It was an amazing gig, like nothing I've seen before or since, but it felt like the end of an era. Now we're doing something more punky, more band-inspired and stripped back. The video screens have gone and this is a show that could work in a pub or as a festival headliner." For the first time, however, Groove Armada won't be on the Lovebox bill this summer.

Both men agree that it's their commitment, perfectionism and the fact that they still like each other that have kept Groove Armada afloat all these years. They met in London as teenagers, Cato having arrived from a Yorkshire village where he played trombone in a colliery brass band and won Young Jazz Musician of the Year. Findlay was the DJ-ing Londoner about town. "He was one of those lucky teenagers who had a room at the top of the house where he could do anything he wanted," recalls Cato. "It was full of records and weed smoke and I thought he was pretty cool."

Both of them admit that it's an odd feeling to have taken so long to make their best work. "We've never been media darlings," Cato says gruffly. "It is unusual to come up with your best record six albums in, but this album is reaping the reward of thousands of hours of work. It's like everything has come home to roost on this album."

Back in London, Findlay nods in agreement. "Finally after 12 years we've got some integrity," he jokes. "If someone sat us down tomorrow and said we have to do another album I think we'd both have a nervous breakdown."

Black Light is released on 1 March on Ministry of Pies/Cooking Vinyl. Groove Armada play the ABC, Glasgow, the same night www.groove armada.com

This article was originally published in Scotland on Sunday on 21 February 2010