English electronic duo Tom Findlay and Andy Cato, better known by the name Groove Armada, win my Album of the Week, with Vertigo – their second studio release, from 1999. Vertigo, like several of my Album of the Week picks, was a bit of a breakthrough album for Groove Armada, coming just a year after their first release, Northern Star, which was a little rougher around the edges, and recipient to a more mixed critical reception.
Groove Armada brought a new, polished sound to the decks with Vertigo, which would deservedly go on to receive high critical acclaim and platinum-certified status. It featured songs which would become synonymous with UK club culture, such as I See You Baby, featuring Gram’ma Funk, and If Everybody Looked the Same, which were two of the record’s singles.
My favourite track from Vertigo is a track which was actually first released in 1997, and featured on their first album, before also being included on our Album of the Week – presumably because Groove Armada realised it was too good to be destined to live soley on Northern Star. The song in question is, of course, At the River. Possibly boasting my favourite ever origin story of any single track,it was created by Cato and Findlay in August 1997, while on a writing retreat in Ambleside. Equipped with just a sampler, keyboard, Cato’s trombone, and a 50p record from a bargain bin, Groove Armada created the iconic track in just a day. The sampled line “If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air, quaint little villages here and there…”, from Patti Page’s Old Cape Cod, released in 1957, was all the pair could squeeze into the 10 seconds allowed by their sampler (they made sure to get their 50p’s worth). As a result, the slightly sombre yet quite evoking sample was born. A lazy breakbeat provides the foundations, and Cato’s trombone is the final piece of the puzzle. Cato created the brass riff, only to realise the pair were not equipped with a microphone. Wanting to record the line so it wasn’t forgotten, he, perhaps ingeniously, rewired a pair of their rented cottage’s speakers to forge a makeshift microphone. This gives the brass line its nostalgic, vintage aura, adding to the wistful persona of the entire piece.
You could say the resulting piece is due to a series of fortunate coincidences, but when it produces a song as special as At the River, who really cares? Groove Armada certainly knew it was special; when they left Ambleside, separately, they were each sure to take a copy, just in case something happened.
As a whole, Vertigo is an experience – a feeling – as much as an album, and it’s a carefree, chilled out one, from the very first crisp guitar chord on album opener Chicago, to the fading, funked up bassline on the way out of Inside My Mind (Blue Skies). I close my eyes and get lost in the atmosphere Groove Armada have created, only being rudely awoken again when the album comes to a finish, and I find I am, in fact, still sitting in Waxing Lyrical HQ, rainy Newcastle, and not in a tropical, beachside bar with a cocktail beside me.
Vertigo feels timeless over 25 years on, and its biggest singles remain just as relevant in the modern day, serving to truly cement Groove Armada’s name in the 21st century electronic music scene.
Waxing Lyrical 