No matter how strong your creative alchemy, sometimes you need a change. For Groove Armada, this bolt from the blue came at what would’ve otherwise been a pinnacle. Standing in the mud, having just closed 2008’s Glastonbury Festival with one of their “biggest ever shows”, Tom Findlay and creative partner Andy Cato’s mood was anything but buoyant.
“It was bizarre,” says Findlay, on the phone to MAG prior to GA’s recent run of Big Day Out shows. “We poured everything we could into that show; we had lasers and this incredible light show. It was like we could never do anything better than that – like the ultimate Groove Armada experience.”
“It felt as though it was the end, in a way. It was like, ‘how can we do better than that?’”
It wasn’t just the live show that had the duo reconsidering their future. In the time since the release of the band’s 2007 record Soundboy Rock, the electronic music landscape – and the duo’s perceived place within it – had shifted dramatically. “We were looking around at all the dance artists who were around when we started, like Basement Jaxx or Chemical Brothers, and just going, ‘things have got to change’,” says Findlay.
“You can see all these new dance acts coming and they’re great; all really exciting, and amongst that you’ve got to find your little space in the world.”
It’s seems an odd assertion from a group who’ve made a name with innovation. In a career spanning the best part of 15 years, they’ve shot to the forefront of the UK dance scene. Groove Armada have traversed a stylistic palette as varied as big beat, house, electro-funk and downbeat, dropping seminal records like Northern Star (1997), Vertigo (1999), Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub) (2001) and Lovebox (2002) in the process.
But Groove Armada’s troubles, Findlay suggests, stretched beyond creative concerns. Cato had relocated from London to rural France, and the duo had also parted ways with their label. “Things had to change career-wise,” he says. “We weren’t on a major anymore – which is a decision we took and something that we felt good about – but the weird thing is that majors operate as a bit of a safety blanket in some ways.
“When that’s all going on; and you’ve got all these geographical issues, when you’re trying to write a record that you believe in, well – put it this way - there was a lot of stuff left on the cutting room floor.” Nonetheless, in the case of rousing new record Black Light, the group’s disquiet proved a blessing in disguise. “We knew we had to go all-out, and in some ways it’s the most ambitious thing we’ve done,” says Findlay.
Indeed, across 11 tracks, the album winds between Bowie–esque pop, shoegaze ambience and angular indie-dance, referencing anyone from Gary Numan to Friendly Fires. “I don’t think we’ve ever written so many things on the one album that are like fully formed songs; with bridges and verses and choruses and really good lyrics.”
Findley is quick to credit Black Light’s personnel in defining the record. While prog and rock-flecked cuts like Not Forgotten, Cards to Your Heart and Warsaw see the duo team up with PNAU’s Nick Littlemore, the wondrous, tonal pulse of Shameless features legendary Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry in his first ever guest vocal role.
Suffice to say, it was a coup. “We sent him some stuff and we started a long courtship,” says Findlay. “We took him for dinner at a really nice Italian restaurant and picked up the bill.
“It’s such an honour to have him work with us. If you thought about it too much you’d get hysterical, going, ‘I’m talking to Bryan Ferry!’ and start freaking out,” he laughs. Despite Black Light’s departures, Findlay is still excited to be part of a burgeoning and diversifying dance scene.
“It’s amazing at the moment,” he urges. “There always used to be this thing of indie and dance moving in cycles, but now they’re so utterly merged that it’s hard to know where one genre starts and the other one sort of finishes.”
“Now you’ve got all these indie kids making music that people can dance to and you’ve got dance kids making great songs that are getting played on indie radio.” And for a re-invented Groove Armada, that works just fine. “It feels like we can do whatever we want now,” says Findlay. “Anything’s possible.”
Black Light is out now via Shock
