Although Tom Findlay was doing the rounds to promote his solo stuff (which I still haven't heard), he's part of Groove Armada and is therefore cool. He sounded like a good bloke.
Words - Suzy Sims
Previously published on Native.tv http://www.native.tv in October 2007
(c) Niche News & Publishing Ltd
TOM FINDLAY (GROOVE ARMADA)
Tom Findlay is better known as being one half of Groove Armada – still ‘Song 4 Mutya’-ing all over the airwaves - and the driving force behind Sugardaddy. We phoned Tom up to talk about his new mix album, those ‘bloody adverts’ and why he’ll be arming himself come Hallowe’en.
Hello, my name’s Suzy, I’m your next boring interviewer.
Hello boring interviewer number two!
How are you this morning?
I’m all right. Been up since about half past five but apart from that I’m fine. I’ve got a one year old daughter who’s an absolute angel but she’s really into getting up. So by half ten I’ll have already been up for half a day.
That must be awkward because musicians tend to get up late and then work late.
It’s not taking its toll at the moment. My wife writes about fashion and so at the moment it’s the fashion week things on where she gets to go to Milan, Paris, London and all that. I’ve got the kids and I’m trying to keep a music career going but when you’re DJing at 3 ‘til 5 in the morning and that’s the time when they’re getting up, that’s not ideal. But anyway they’re totally lovely and in a few years time they’ll be really cross with me when I try and get them out of bed and it’ll all be ok.
What was the last film you watched?
Erm… bababababa… tschh… the last film that I can remember watching… erm… was derderder… oh god it was that thing…
You can’t remember it, can you?
I can! I went to see Atonement, the big Ian McEwan novel. It’s Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. It’s good, it’s about the Second World War and it’s nearly a great film but somehow it’s just not quite. I don’t understand why. James McAvoy is in Shameless and The Last King of Scotland. He’s fantastic.
Have you got any superstitions?
The only bizarre one is I always brush my teeth before I go onstage. I don’t know why. Just going out there with minty fresh breath seems to help.
I’m sure the crowd can feel it.
Ice cold demeanour. It all comes from Colgate.
Plug for Colgate. They’ll love it.
I should get free tubes of Colgate for a lifetime now.
Would you put your songs on a Colgate advert?
Probably. We pretty much put our songs on every bloody advert that’s ever been, so why stop at Colgate? If you put your songs in a BHS ad then you know, you just can’t get much lower.
Why stop at Colgate, there’s Aquafresh, there’s… all the other ones.
For some time I’ve been thinking of writing a whole Groove Armada album which is just a series of slogans to get onto ads but I’ve never quite got round to it. Just like Robbie Williams did. He’ll probably make a fucking fortune out of that one and I’m sure he knew what he was doing at the time.
Do you know much about the ‘Watch The Ride’ series of albums?
I know that Scratch Perverts started the series. I think the idea is it’s very much DJ-led, if you’re going in a club and you’re seeing these people, this is what they play. The Scratch Perverts thing was obviously much more of a hip hop cut-and-paste vibe. It was really good though, really well pulled off. Mine was a sort of housey theme but a housey theme with a little bit of a twist.
What made you do it, did they ask you to?
They nagged at me like constantly. They made my life a misery until I was just like ‘enough already’ and did it. No, I mean there definitely was an element of that. There was also an element of, I’ve got this Sugardaddy project so I just thought it was quite a good opportunity to plug that while I’m at it sort of thing.
What other tracks stand out on there for you?
There’s one called ‘Camino del Sol’ which is a wacky mix which is one of my favourite house records over the last year, so I’d say that one’s definitely a big one. And then I love 'I Love Space', the Lindstrom track which opens it. Neither of those are sort of massively underground but they’re two really lovely records.
Whose tracks would you like to remix?
Goodness gracious, I mean there’s so much stuff I’d like to remix. I tend to not be particularly interested in remixing house music, which is you just put a different set of beats and a different context, but I’m definitely interested in getting into production more than remixing now. A remix is cool but is basically you get people to do an enormous amount of work and find the right indie record and then the artist gets all the rights. It never really adds up for me.
I think production’s where I’m at right now and after doing poppy stuff like the Mutya stuff I quite fancy doing a bit more of that. There’s something quite liberating about pop music in a way.
And you’re collaborating with Kylie I heard?
Well we HAD collaborated with her, but unsuccessfully in that she didn’t use any of the songs. But then we’re in good company because I think she didn’t use any of Hot Chip’s or Mylo’s, and in fact Mylo - to his enormous credit - posted his unused songs up on an internet site for about 35 seconds before the Kylie world just shut it all down. ‘This page never existed’ sort of thing. It was very Secret Service. We haven’t done that but I might just to see how long the website stays up there for. I might be ruined if I do.
Are you still much involved with the download site TuneTribe?
I did that but I don’t do it any more. I basically set it up and it still exists, and I helped to recruit a lot of people who are still working there and they’re all nice people so that’s cool. It didn’t really suit me in the sense of I’ve always been my own boss in a way and I found the process of working in a big company just very frustrating. So I did them a little deal, I gave them my shares to Tunetribe and they gave me the rights back to the Sugardaddy album that I’d released on Tunetribe and now it’s better.
You’ve got a tour coming up in November, looking forward to it?
Very much so. I’m not just saying this because of the sales pitch, but it’s definitely the best live band we’ve ever had in terms of personnel and in terms of material. Stush (singer on ‘Get Down’) comes on the road with us now and she’s bringing along a new personality for the whole thing, so alongside her and the two singers we normally use, we can have a right old go at it.
I’m really digging what we’re doing now. When we first started out we were rubbish and we got better and better. For me, doing the gig we did at Lovebox last year was one of the crowning moments in my career and I look forward to getting the boys and girls back on the road again. It’s like there’s certain mistakes I’ve made as part of Groove Armada and things that I wish I hadn’t done, but there’s nothing about the band that makes me feel that way.
Is the tour for ‘Soundboy Rock’? Did you tour the album earlier this year?
We did a sort of tour very quickly after it was released. I think the only venue we’re playing again that we’ve played before is the Apollo in Manchester, apart from that we’re playing different cities. Oh no, we’re doing Glasgow again but we’re doing two this time. People are obviously enjoying it because they’re coming back. We put on a great live show, yeah! We’re the best live dance act in the world. [laughs]
Did you play Bestival? I heard rumours you did but I didn’t see your name anywhere.
No we didn’t. We were definitely talking about it at one stage but then it seemed to go away and then that was the weekend that my wife’s fashion week stuff all started. I couldn’t really be gallivanting around the Isle of Wight because I’d have two small children with me. I played it before and loved it, it’s a fantastic festival. It’s got a real vibe about it, I think it’s that fancy dress thing and people just turning up with the right sort of attitude. The first year I played here I played a house set and loved it, and last year Sugardaddy did a little gig and that was great as well, so it’s one of my favourite festivals, with the obvious exception of Lovebox.
What else have you got coming up this year?
Well we’re going to do a lot of touring in Australia again which we always tend to do around November/December because it’s a nicer place to be than England. We’d like to go back to the States, because even though it’s not a massive record market for us it’s always been good for us in terms of live.
We’re out of our label deal with Sony now so we might do our own record and do what Radiohead have done ('In Rainbows' - set your own price) but maybe possibly set a little bit of a ceiling. We’re not as rich as Radiohead so we can’t quite afford to let people pay whatever they like, but I do think what they’ve done is interesting and I think we’re now in the same position: we’re an artist that’s got a fanbase - which is nothing like the fanbase they've got - but we’ve got a fanbase and we can communicate direct to them. So that’ll be interesting, do an album and flog it for no less than a fiver probably, or let people set their own price, within a very narrow band.
Between £5 and £5.50. Postage £20.
Exactly. Plus an administration fee as well. That’s the answer.
Almost done Tom. What are you doing for Halloween this year?
Christ. Probably boarding up the windows! The kids round our place are just lunatics. I’m just going to get as many of those Celebrations packets to see if we can keep them at bay and if that’s not enough I’m going to shell out fivers to keep them all away. It’s just utter chaos. It’s fun for the first hour but then it becomes incredibly threatening. I’ll probably just stand there with an air gun shooting at people.
Native.tv says: Kids, you have been warned…
--------
'Watch The Ride', mixed by Tom Findlay, is released through Harmless Recordings on September 24th.
No comments:
Post a Comment