The spinnish armada is coming

By STEPHEN JEWELL

Anyone who witnessed Groove Armada's storming live set at the St James this year should expect something a little different when Andy Cato and Tom Findlay return to DJ at the Summadayze festival.

However, Cato and Findlay won't just be bringing their record crates - their regular percussionist and MC, M.A.D., the voice behind numerous Groove Armada songs including Superstylin' and Final Shakedown, is coming too.

"DJing at Summadayze will be a bit of a departure," says Cato, speaking on the phone from his London home.

"DJing in clubs is something that we do week in, week out, but DJing at festivals to thousands and thousands of people is more of a challenge because for most people you're just a distant spot on the stage.

"You've got to work hard to make sure that it's engaging to people, and because it's hard to reach that number of people just by playing records, we feel that we need to up the ante and bring our MC and percussion player as well."

M.A.D.'s presence also means that Groove Armada can play some crowd favourites such as Superstylin'.

"And we also do little snippets from I See You Baby and Final Shakedown off Lovebox, plus a few exclusive bootleg versions of our tunes that we bring with us as well," says Cato.

"We basically play house music with a few twists and turns. It's getting quite difficult now to find stuff that we're into at the minute.

"You can expect some funky stuff, but we also go quite hard in places or in a disco direction, depending on the audience."

The past 12 months have been relatively quiet for Cato and Findlay following the release late last year of their fourth album, Lovebox, which has been reissued with an obligatory bonus disc. "I was pleasantly surprised the other day when somebody told me how many copies it had sold," says Cato, "although I forget how much it actually is."

However, Cato and Findlay have no plans for a fifth Groove Armada album and are instead concentrating on solo projects and launching their record label, Ragbull Records.

"Tom is doing some dance music at his place and I'm doing an acoustic style, rock album for want of a better description," says Cato. "We just want to do some different stuff."