Groove Armada

Premiere: Sugardaddy’s “Don’t Look Any Further” (Hot Toddy Remix)

Darren Ressler Leave a Comment

tom findlay groove armada sugar daddy

God made Tom Findlay funky. One half of Grammy-nominated Groove Armada and Sugardaddy, Findlay knows how to get down and dirty in the DJ booth and behind the production boards. Hot on the heels of releasing his back-to-the-future Late Night Tales Presents Automatic Soul, an unforgettable 20-track DJ mix featuring a wealth of sublime R&B/dance-infused ’80s nuggets from Meli’sa Morgan, The Gap Band, Timex Social Club, Change and Sharon Brown, we’re thrilled to world premiere Hot Toddy Remix of Sugardaddy’s cover of Dennis Edwards’ 1984 jam “Don’t Look Any Further” culled from the upcoming same-named remix EP.

Hot Toddy (a.k.a Nottingham-based beatmaster Chris Todd) strips Sugardaddy’s interpretation down to its core, leaving behind a cosmic track that’s sexier than a pair of skin-tight disco pants.

Have a listen below and get ready to lose your mind.

Sugardaddy’s Don’t Look Any Further (Remixes) EP is released on November 16. Pre-order from the nice folks at iTunes here.

Image by Heather Shuker

Album Review: Andy Cato / ‘Times & Places’ (Apollo)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

andy-cato-times-places

★★★★☆

Owner of a well-worn passport, Andy Cato sidesteps going around the world in 80 raves and creates instrumental reflections out of check-ins, layovers and time to kill. Hotel lobbies, lock-ins, road trips and terminals are his canvas, as the co-captain of the good ship Groove Armada re-masters lost cassettes, audio doodles and sonic postcards, in some cases rebuilding them from scratch to preserve their memory.

Production both plush and tremulous could just well have seen Cato holed up in an orchestrally-extended studio (“The Coastal Path”) for years on end rather than revisiting a traveller’s scrapbook. Lots of wise electronica, trip-hop kickbacks, free and open chillout and back to mine strums bump in time to the wheels of the pick-up truck Cato thumbs a lift from. A sense of the open road/world does not make for a cultural compare and contrast. It’s more a means of de-ringing ears and finding a happy place when the life of the jetsetter sometimes yearns for home.

Here lies the album expressive lean; everything’s fairly buoyant and in the moment, save for a couple of sterner border checkpoints, dismissing the dullness of any waiting room by looking for its next session under the stars (“Back from Castlemorton,” “Rear Window”) or hitting a secret spot only his inner circle knows of. Very media-savvy as well (“Abbey Road Jam,” “North from Montparnasse” as a boy of summer), it’s a fine companion for your own travels or when returning to terra firma.

File under: Andrew Bayer, Anthiliawaters, Windsurf

Compilation Review: ‘Late Night Tales presents Music for Pleasure’ (Late Night Tales)

Matt Oliver Leave a Comment

★★★☆☆

The Late Night Tales series regularly pays homage to the long forgotten, the previously thought lost, the criminally overlooked and most key to the concept, and what’s personal to the selector in charge. With Tom Findlay of Groove Armada seemingly suffering from a midlife crisis longing for ’70s/’80s standards in songwriting and campaigning for the bringing back of AM radio, this could make Father’s Day gift buying a piece of cake.

On Music for Pleasure, we’re not talking dust-crippled obscurities, mash-ups, B-sides or alternative takes. Just recognizable (some might say overplayed) blue-eyed, red-blooded pop-soul originals from Robert Palmer, Michael McDonald, 10CC and Gerry Rafferty, as Late Night Tales takes on the guise of a Desert Island Discs-style selection just as likely to be referenced in Family Guy as they are held dear. Fascinating as to the inner workings of a dance music producer’s mind (or should that be how bold they are as to owning up to dirty little secrets in their record collection, Findlay revisiting mixtape protocol that he probably hopes will get him laid), the franchise has either lost the plot or broadened its appeal as it aims for the open, middle of the road (you can tell there’s a bit of satire going on with its promises of “Yacht Rock!” on the sleeve). Joking aside, a neat compilation featuring big stars and a few names to do some research on.
File under: Hall & Oates, The Doobie Brothers, Steve Miller Band

Contest Alert! Win Tickets to Ultra Music Festival

Big Shot Magazine 1 Comment

Ultra Music Festival 2012, taking place March 23-26, at Bayfront Amphitheater in Downtown Miami, sold-out almost instantly thanks to its stellar lineup of talent including: Tiësto, Kraftwerk, Carl Cox, Skrillex, Afrojack, Miike Snow, Pretty Lights, New Order, Groove Armada (DJ set), Dirty South, Loco Dice, A-Trak, Dada Life, Avicii, Justice, Fatboy Slim, Duck Sauce, M83, Carl Cox, Laidback Luke, 2manydjs, Metronomy, David Guetta, Armin Van Buuren, Kaskade, Bassnectar, Chase and Status, Bloody Beetroots (DJ set), Fedde Le Grand, Knife Party, Magnetic Man, John Digweed, Steve Aoki, Ferry Corsten, and many more.

Tickets are impossible to get, but Big Shot is giving away a precious pair of tickets to the three-day blowout courtesy of our friends at UMF.

Excited? You should be!

To enter the contest tweet the following:

I want to win @ultramusic tickets from @bigshotmagazine

Remember: you only need to tweet the above sentence once in order to enter the contest. Good luck!

The Rules:

• Entrants must be following @bigshotmagazine and @ultramusic
• Winner is responsible for transportation to/from UMF 2012
• Anyone found using multiple accounts to enter will be ineligible
• Contest ends at 12:00pm EST on March 22, 2012

Like Big Shot on Facebook. It’s free!

And the winner is…

Big thanks to everyone who entered the contest!