Back Into The Groove

In the dimly lit reception room of a London recording studio, Groove Armada’s Tom Cato is trying to describe how it feels to be rejected by Kylie Minogue: “Kylie's people called us up and asked us to do a song for her new album. The track we did was fantastic, but we didn't have an opportunity to flesh it out properly. So it didn't make the final cut."

Blame Minogue's nightmare schedule. In the end, Cato and GA partner Tom Findlay only had three hours in the studio with Kylie. Under enormous pressure, they put together the bones of a tune. However, the ticking clock prevented them from properly developing their ideas.
“You know how it is – sometimes these collaborations just don’t work out,” Cato rues. "Kylie herself was lovely. She’s sweet and self-effacing but she’s also an absolute pro. She knows how to crack the whip.”
Still, there’s an upside – GA get to keep the as-yet-untitled track for themselves. And, says Cato, it’s a doozie.
“The way we see it, it’s their loss ‘cos now we’re going to give it to someone else.”
From club rats to pop puppetmasters, it’s been a long, strange journey for Groove Armada. Having earned their chops cranking out reggae-infused dancefloor bangers, Cato and Findlay are neck-deep in a mid-career reinvention, of which their aborted Kylie collab represents merely the latest chapter. If their comeback (GA took a four year hiatus starting in 2002) has a defining moment it's probably ‘Song For Mutya’, the shimmering funk excursion penned for ex-Sugababe Mutya Buena.
“The funny thing was that, in a way, writing a pop song for a former Sugababe earned us the most credibility we’ve ever had in our career,” says Cato. “For ten years, we’ve been doing this underground dance stuff, but the most kudos we ever got was from being associated with Mutya.”
That said, Cato and Findlay have weathered a few set-backs as well. Most recently, they had to endure the “embarrassment” of seeing one of their early anthems, ‘At The River’, tacked onto a gloopy Marks & Spencer advert.
“I cringe every time I see it,” shivers Cato. “I don’t necessarily object to having our songs used in ads. We do, after all, get paid for it, but this particular ad was too much: the song comes on and there’s footage of someone pouring chocolate sauce over a slice of pie. Horrible. I don't have a problem with Marks & Spencers per se. I do a lot of my shopping there. Had we known how the ad would look, though, we wouldn't have said yes.”
Groove Armada emerged from the Ibiza underworld in 1997 with the aforementioned ‘At The River’, a blissed-to-the-eyeballs piece of electronica that surfed on a bed of drowsy horns. Initially the song threatened to become a millstone as GA were dismissed as chill-out specialists. By 1999’s ‘I See You Baby’ – famously remixed by Fatboy Slim and used in a Renault commercial – they’d started to leave the tag behind, however.
“It was a relief to have a big dancefloor hit because it was frustrating to read about yourself in the chill-out context when, every night, you were up there on stage giving it loads.”
Behind Cato and Findlay’s recent hiatus lay a deepening disillusionment with the music industry. Signed to a pop label, Jive, they found themselves sharing a roster with Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and, more problematically, Steps.
“Our UK record company just didn’t get us. They had no idea where we were coming from or what we were trying to achieve. You’d sit there in meetings and people would be prattling on and you’d think, ‘Do they even know what we sound like?’”
In a post-download world, of course, record companies have seen much of their power leeched away, something Cato regards as, on balance, a positive.
“They’re going to have to reposition themselves because, before long they’re not going to be making money from record sales,” he avers. “Right now, they’re trying to negotiate with artists for a greater share of touring revenues. They’re trying to reinvent themselves as marketing companies rather than businesses that sell records. And so, of course, they want a cut of your touring money. They’d want a share in your first-born child if they thought they could get away with it.

Groove Armada play Some Days Never End on October 25 with Dizee Rascal. A ten year retrospective album, GA10, will be released later this year.