I think I may have been dabbling with things for the first time, so it was a particularly enjoyable rave.
A mate of mine Jools Butterfield played this tune, and I remember it as a moment in time. I'd never really liked house music before then, I was always into funk and soul, and I know it's not a house record, but it kind of obeys all the rules of house, so I thought, 'OK I'm gonna have to give this a go'. We played with him on the album Goodbye Country Hello Nightclub , he did two tracks on that and then he recorded with us again on the following album Lovebox. We performed on Jools Holland with him a couple of times, we did a few shows at Brixton and we played Glastonbury with him too.
To have had an experience with someone like that is incredibly moving, you know? He was an amazing man and a beautiful soul, and that record was really special to me. The original was by Holland-Dozier-Holland, it's quite a classic soul record, and he does a lot of covers, but this is more of a traditional set-up and band vibe, inserting that chugging piano into the cover. I think we came along at a point in his life where he was still going out on the road, but maybe playing to older audiences and doing jazz gigs, and then suddenly he was back up there on the main stage at Glastonbury with the kids, in his sunnies and cowboy boots.
I think he just enjoyed that experience and energy, and it gave him a kick in a point in his life and we loved it. He came to this endeavour as a bit of a house head, really influenced by Sasha, and I came from a boogy, disco background.
I guess this tune is a tune that when we DJ together, we both love it equally. It brings everything that I love and that we bring to Groove Armada. I DJ quite a lot when I can, more on the funk side of things, and it's a really lovely record to play, because you don't need to mix it, you just slam it on and it's off and it's mayhem. It's a bastard to get out of mind you, because it's speeding up and down constantly, but I love playing it.
It creates carnage on the dancefloor - that sort of jazz funk that you can really dance to. It's been sampled so many times as well, it's all over a couple of Moodymann records and they're right to sample it. That kind of chatter, you can really hear the people getting down in the studio.
He was a really influential DJ for me, and grew up in the same town as me, or another guy called Tim Lee, who went on to start Tummy Touch Records. It almost certainly would have been one of them. I think I bought the record almost by accident, in New York from A1 Records a place on 6th Street, thinking I was going to be buying a Sylvester disco record, but I was pleasantly surprised.
There's been quite a lot of re-edits of it released recently, and there's one by Kon, who's a re-edit genius, but he doesn't really nail it, because when you impose a structure on a piece of music like that it somehow takes the energy out of it. I do an annual festival called Meatopia, it's a meat festival in Tobacco Dock, and even there, where it's not a particularly 'cool' crowd, you can play a tune like that and its pure joy.
I spent some time in New York when I was in my 20s, and it definitely takes me back to that time, and a million parties in Cambridge. I did a few Mancuso Loft parties , but I never quite went to those great parties of the time, like the Larry Levan parties. I'm a little too old for all of that sadly, but I think of myself in that moment imagining I'm at one of those parties when this comes on. I love its musicality too. I've never worked out the chords, but I bet if you played it as a ballad on the piano it would still sound pretty lovely.
Despite mountains of dodgy chillout compilations, it should never be forgotten that during "chillout" music's commercial apogee in the UK and Europe in the early to mid's some very fine albums were released. Listening to Groove Armada's second and third albums now, however, is to hear nothing less than two classic works of modern downtempo lounge. Their second release Vertigo is the album that cemented the duo's reputation, applying slick house production aesthetics over a broad canvas of instrumentals, vocal and part-vocal tracks.
The album's organic and always rhythmic sound encompasses landscaped synths, funky basslines and guitar, hip hop breaks and scratching, percussive bongo grooves and dreamy ambient tunes. It's a sample-heavy album, and some of those samples are gleefully obscure. Other borrowings are much more recent; despite the live funk guitar, the sublimely layered instrumental "Chicago" would be a very different thing where it not for a couple of uncredited samples ahem from a Chemical Brothers track.
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