Groove Armada Interview

Tom Findlay from the superstylin’ duo gets on his soap box…

Tom Findlay, half of one of dance music’s most successful partnerships, kicks off Groove Armada’s ‘Bang the Box’ residency at The End on Saturday 9th February. The pair have come a long way from being jobbing musicians to headlining global festivals, even setting up one of their own, the fantastic Lovebox, on the way.

With their fifth studio album under their belt and 10 years of Groove Armada behind them, they’ve decided it’s time to get back to their roots and get behind the decks – and after the crowd reaction last time they played The End, we’re mighty glad to have them! In this interview, Tom gives us a taste of what to expect from the new residency, and reveals a hidden passion for two of our favourite crooners - George Michael and Barry White.

Endclub.com: You and Andy are about to kick off a new bi-monthly residency at The End – are you looking forward to it?

Tom Findlay (Groove Armada): Yes of course we are, it’ll be great, and it’s been a while since we played regularly on the London club scene. I think the last time we played was the Lovebox afterparty at The End, or maybe a boat party. It’s good getting 10 years of Groove Armada behind us and not being on a major label any more - the whole thing feels more exciting. I genuinely believe that we are living in a bit of a golden age of dance music – there are so many good tunes again, almost too many!

What can we expect at the new night?

For the first party I’m playing the main room on my own as Andy can’t make it, but after that we’ll both play in the main room together – The End is one of the best clubs in the world for that. I love the main room for its total chaos, being in the middle of all that mania. I have very fond memories of my last gig at The End after Lovebox when I spent most of the night trying to keep my fake ‘tache on that I’d picked up at Horse Meat Disco – after about two hours I thought “this is ridiculous, I need to focus on DJing!” It’s always an amazing room ‘coz you’re right in the middle of it - there’s no hiding, but once you’ve got used to it, it’s brilliant! We’ve got some really good ideas for main room guests, I think we can nail that room perfectly.

However I'm also really looking forward to playing in the lounge; if you get it right, you can get a real house party vibe. That back room, slightly less pumping set is not something I get to do that often, because when we’re DJing as Groove Armada people expect us to be quite upfront, so it will be great to get back to my roots – I started off as a rare groove DJ, so it suits me down to the ground. In terms of lounge guests we’ll be looking at people like Maurice Fulton, Mock & Toof and Severino from Horse Meat Disco. It will still be dance music, but from a slightly different angle.

While your faithful comrades the Lovebox Allstars represented you at The End on NYE, you were playing Bondi Beach. We’re jealous – how was that?

It was great! It was pretty mental actually – almost too mental! There were about 30,000 people there, and they were all so excited. I should have got a megaphone out and shouted “calm down!” as it was completely insane. And then after our gig, I DJed to all those people which was utterly bizarre – it’s quite hard playing to a crowd that size as you don’t know if you can keep them all satisfied, but as long as a few of them are happy then it’s fine!

This year Groove Armada played for the last night ever before the Hammersmith Palais was knocked down – how was that? Did you have any particular emotional attachment to the Palais?

That was the first gig of our ‘Soundboy Rock’ tour, and it was great. To be honest I don’t have any particular attachment to the place - we rocked up there about 6pm for the soundcheck and Suggs was there making a programme about the end of the venue, and we felt a little bit fraudulent – like maybe Madness should have brought the curtain down, not us! But it was a great venue - it seems a real shame to let it go. I’ve been there a few times before – I thought the stage and stuff was great, but I suppose there were greater powers at work.

And did you get a piece of it to take away with you?

I think we took a few bits and pieces, yeah!

You’re not usually on stage when Groove Armada play these days – do you miss the excitement of standing out there in front of tens of thousands of people, or is the knowledge you created the songs enough?

Yeah that’s right, although I think I’m going to get back on stage this year. For a long time we’ve been making a lot of changes in how we produce the show, so it’s been helpful to have one person out front and one of us on stage. I think we’re getting to the point now where it’s pretty locked down, so I think I’m gonna get back on stage, get a pair of castanets and point at loads of people! I must admit after doing that gig on Bondi in front of such a large crowd, I got the buzz back again, but at the same time I feel a large amount of pride being in the middle of the crowd – it all feels pretty spectacular from wherever I am.

Over the years Groove Armada’s style has gradually become more upbeat and dancefloor driven – was this a conscious decision or just how your sound has evolved naturally?

I think it’s had a lot to do with how the band performs live. You’re doing all these festivals, and suddenly you don’t want to be playing chill out music, you want to be up there just having it. The more you do these headline shows, the more you want to make it bombastic. We’re still really proud that we made records like ‘At The River’ and that’s still going to figure in our sets, but it feels like the more upbeat stuff is what we like doing, and it’s what the band likes doing – it just seems to suit us better.

Where does all the reggae and ragga influence come from on tracks like ‘Superstylin’ and ‘Soundboy Rock’?

I’ve no idea really! It must be something to do with our MC who is half from Trinidad and Tobago, and half from London, and there are other influences around the band like that. I think that kind of music has a lot of drive to it, it’s something about that off-beat skanking thing that when doing it live, it just sort of works. I guess it’s part of British culture, that two-tone sound, ska and dub. I grew up listening to bands like The Specials and The Beat, so the influence is in there somewhere along the line.

I read that George Michael is on your list of ‘people-you’d-like-to-remix’ – will we ever get to see a ‘Careless Whisper’ Groove Armada remix?

I don’t know about that! ‘Everything She Wants’ is my favourite Wham record by a million miles – I think it’s just unbelievable – but I wouldn’t want to remix it. I must admit though, I do have a slight guilty pleasure about ‘Last Christmas’ – especially the video. George Michael is brilliant. I did actually send him a note a while ago, with some examples of my work asking to remix him but I never heard back. So I imagine that’s a no!

There’s an awful scouse house remix of ‘Careless Whisper’ called ‘That Saxophone Track’…

Haha yeah that’s the kind of thing I was hoping to do, so that’s maybe why he didn’t call me back!

It was great to see old favourites the B52’s and Sly and the Family Stone on the line-up at last year’s Lovebox. Any plans to bring back more legends this year?

Yes we have – we are always into reviving a few old legends. Headliner-wise, confirmed so far it’s ourselves and The Flaming Lips. There’s a couple more in the pipeline that are gonna be really exciting, people that are more new school than old school. I think there’s always a place in Lovebox’s heart for older acts, so there’ll definitely be someone up there.

Groove Armada’s ‘Back to Mine’ mix was one of The End offices’ favourite mix albums when it came out – putting Barry White on was a stroke of genius! Are you and Andy big fans of our favourite love granddad?

Well actually there’s a bit of a special story behind that. Me and my mate Joe went out to LA when we were about 18, and we somehow lucked out and got this house with a jacuzzi in. The first record that I bought in LA had that particular tune on, and I remember sitting in the jacuzzi listening to Barry White and thinking, “I’ve arrived.” The whole album is called ‘Barry White Sings Love Songs for You’ and it has a Vaseline-lens cover of him, probably with a hairy chest, and a medallion. It’s definitely worth checking out. It has ‘Playing Your Game Baby’ on but also ‘It’s Ecstasy When you Lay Down Next to Me’ which is one of the finest love song titles ever made.

Your solo mix album ‘Watch the Ride’ came out in September last year with a mix of upfront tracks alongside more established artists. Is the mix an accurate representation of your DJ sets?

Well it’s one representation, as my DJ sets can be underground, beepy and bleepy like that, but I also love stuff like ‘Finally’ by Ce Ce Peniston, so you just never know where it’s going to go. That’s what I’m looking forward to with playing The End’s lounge – never doing the same thing twice, it should be good fun.

Who are, in your opinion, the most exciting new musical talents out there at the moment – whether singers, musicians, producers, DJ’s….

There’s so many! There’s an Australian band who I really like, the Midnight Juggernauts, who in terms of a live band are a lot of fun – so we’re gonna get right behind them and try and get them over to Lovebox. That whole Ed Banger thing is brilliant. There’s a film called Steak you should check out, it’s been written by Mr Oizo, and the soundtrack’s by him, Sebastien Tellier and SebastiAn - it's hilarious but really brilliant. I thought the Simian Mobile Disco album was fantastic. It’s a very exciting time for dance music, I don’t think anyone realises quite how much is going on. At some point something’s going to stick its head above the parapet and cross over into the mainstream, like Norman Cook, Basement Jaxx, and I suppose us to a lesser extent. I thought the Justice album would, and I thought that ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ tune was going to become massive - I still don’t understand why it didn’t. It’s very buzzing in London right now, and I’ve been out to Berlin a lot recently, and that’s great too. I really like the sounds that are around at the moment. I was never a lover of trance, I felt pretty alienated when all that was going on – and I know it’s still there in certain corners of the globe but fortunately I never get to hear it!

What’s the secret for working with one person for so long and not driving each other insane?

Keeping your distance as much as possible! It helps Andy moving to Barcelona and me living in London. It’s much better this way – we still see each other a huge amount as we are touring for four months of the year, so we are in each other’s faces for all that time. It works spectacularly well - I’ll go out to Barcelona for a few days and we work hard on something, then we go away from it for a few months so we have time to do our own productions and explore new sounds on our own. I think you come to this a bit like a marriage – you are probably better off together than you are apart, even if you do drive each other a bit mad. Somewhere down the line we probably love each other!

So no one’s filing for divorce just yet?

Definitely not!

Who would win in an arm wrestle between Tom and Andy?

I would win on my left, he would win on his right!

Thanks Tom!

Published: 1/02/2008

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