“I needed to get a brief snooze in,” explains Groove Armada’s Andy Cato when he finally surfaces to talk with me, his voice still gruff from sleep. “I’ve been rehearsing the band in the daytime and playing around programming the computer-side of the live set in the studio in the night time so I’m running 24 hours a day at the minute.”
It may come as a surprise to some to hear that Groove Armada is so busy – after all it’s almost ten years since the band delivered the breakthrough single At the River and coming up to five years since the duo’s last album Lovebox (2004’s Best Of doesn’t really count) … Indeed for all intents and purposes the two halves that make up Groove Armada, Cato and partner in crime Tom Findlay, have been sailing different ships the last few years. Cato has been busy with side projects as has Findlay (including label/download site Tunetribe) and for a while it seemed that the Groove Armada partnership was in limbo.
When news broke of a planned new album (soon to be released Soundboy Rock) suddenly GA was hot property once more. Tour announcements added to the heat – then the band leaked samples of the new tracks onto their website and the fever pitch increased.
Cut to Cato, dishevelled from sleep and overwork and it points to an interesting decade for the outfit. According to Cato, Groove Armada’s longevity in the business has come as a surprise.
“Ten years is a good amount of time,” he utters. “Ten years since At the River and five years for Lovebox – this is our anniversary year… I never would have expected it to get to this point. We just take it week to week, really. I don’t think anyone that goes into the music industry expects to be there in a decade – it’s so dispensable,” he pauses. “Our first objective was to have fun.”
That principle of having fun also finds the duo well equipped to break expected conventions – just witness the way the critics gushed over Lovebox – ‘Lovebox is slick and clever – singles a plenty’ – MOJO;’ they’ve made an entire album with more peaks than the Pyrenees – Rolling Stone. “Our albums have been called groundbreaking and have received a lot of praise,” admits Andy.
So we should expect more groundbreaking work from Soundboy Rock? Perhaps? Perhaps not?
“Of course you’re going to be influenced by what you’re hearing weekend in and weekend out,” says Cato. “But I think we’ve been influenced by the longer haul. With Groove Armada we existed outside the media circus for such a long time now that we’re not that bothered in trying to latch onto the latest thing. That said, there is a bit of the
eighties vibe on the record and it’s a bit thrashy too and there are some fantastic vocal performances from a wide array of performers.”
The inspiration for many of the new tunes according to Cato has come simply from the pair living out the day to day minutiae of life… “A lot of what inspires me is pretty basic. We’re DJs and we hear a lot of things on the scene and that obviously informs our sound – whether we’re aware of it or not. But then we go into the studios and start pushing it a bit and we hope that we end up with a song that is very much of the moment.”
Whilst Groove Armada may have been all quiet on the recording front for a considerable time, the duo have continued to play live gigs in the years between Lovebox and this year’s offering…
“The live following has been incredible,” says Cato. “If you graphed our concerts compared to our media exposure in the last few years you’d be quite surprised, I’d say. Our fans have always been very strong. And we love doing the live shows.”
So if they love performing, obviously still get on well and the creative juices are still flowing – why so long between albums?
“We’ve had some terrible experiences with record labels,” answers Cato. “Except for the people in Australia,” he adds quickly “And now we’re with a label that for the first time was really positive – and was asking us for new records and was going into things with us in a cerebral and musical way so we wanted to record and we started getting excited about it.”
Given that he and Findlay now live on separate continents how easy was it to come up with the time and the inclination to get together and create? According to Cato the internet has been their saving grace.
“I live in Barcelona and Tom is in London so it can often be a difficult process but this time around we’ve had more contact because of email and the internet. It’s changed the way we work. We can be working on a tune and within five minutes I can have sent a track through to Tom…it’s fantastic – but at some point you have to get together and see how it all fits…”
Cato admits the band’s keen to get to Australia to showcase the new album. “We can’t wait – Australia is definitely the scene of some of our best gigs over the years – and we’re definitely looking forward to coming back with all these new tracks and this new set and getting people to hear them.”
You can see Groove Armada at the inaugural V Festival and the Best of V Fest, check out our full coverage page HERE.
