Groove Armada announce details of Black Night

 

Groove Armada – Andy Cato and Tom Findlay – release their hotly awaited new studio album ‘Black Light’, February 22nd, which sees the masters of reinvention move in some thrilling new directions.

“We needed a new challenge, explains Andy. “Bands like Friendly Fires, Klaxons, Passion Pit, and MGMT, they’re the ones really leading the charge, making genuinely exciting, dance-informed music. That sound really pushed us back towards people like Bowie, Fleetwood Mac and Roxy Music.”

 

Recorded in Tom’s studio in North London, the 12-track album features intriguing and fascinating collaborations with Bryan Ferry, Will Young and Nick Littlemore (Empire Of The Sun/PNAU) among others.

 

Bryan Ferry supplies his first ever guest vocal to the softly intense ‘Shameless’. Having had ‘Love Is A Drug’ on repeat for much of the recording it seemed only right. While the yearning voice heard on the stirring house lullaby ‘History’ belongs to Will Young, a good friend of Andy’s.

 

With their fingers sitting permanently on the musical pulse Andy and Tom recruited lesser-known quantities but equally impactful in Nick Littlemore (Empire Of The Sun/PNAU), electro wonder kids Fenech Soler, livewire female vocalist SaintSaviour and Brooklynite Jess Larrabee.

 

Nick appears on the first song for the record ‘Warsaw’ – a juddering electro-rocker that became an online hit when it was offered as a free sneak preview in September. His vocals drive the delicate ‘Fall Silent’, the menacing ‘Not Forgotten’ and 80s-tinged popper ‘Cards To Your Heart’.

 

Another of Black Light’s main contributors is SaintSaviour who fronted the ‘Black Light’ preview tour in October. The singer has lent her crystalline vocals to the album’s first single ‘I Won’t Kneel’ (Out November 23rd), as well as the second single ‘Paper Romance’ (Due February 15th), who she shares vocals with Ben from electro wonder-kids Fenech Soler.

 

SaintSaviour also appears on the driving, electro-‘Time and Space’ alongside Jess Larrabee. “We’ve never actually met Jess,” says Andy, “We got really into her albums and started emailing tracks for her to add vocals. Her music usually has more of a White Stripes kind of vibe. She got really into the disco flavour and absolutely nailed it.”

 

Larrabee lends her voice to the album’s gorgeous mellow gem, Just For Tonight’ and provides some New York attitude to the spiky, rocked-up ‘Look Me In The Eye Sister’ – a track the Yeah Yeah Yeahs would kill for.

 

“It’s amazing to make a record at this point in your career that you’re viscerally excited about,” says Tom. “Even people who’ve hated everything we’ve ever made before could absolutely love this record. I’m incredibly proud of it.”

 

Tracklisting & List Of Collaborators

 

Look Me In The Eye Sister Feat. Jess Larrabee

Fall Silent Feat. Nick Littlemore

Just For Tonight Feat. Jess Larrabee

Not Forgotten Feat. Nick Littlemore

I Wont Kneel Feat. SaintSaviour

Cards To Your Heart Feat. Nick Littlemore

Paper Romance Feat. Fenech Soler & SaintSaviour

Warsaw Feat. Nick Littlemore

Shameless Feat. Bryan Ferry

Time & Space Feat. SaintSaviour & Jess Larrabee

History Feat. Will Young

 

 

Thanks Sunday.

 

A new track to download in the New Year. Really looking forward to hearing this collaboration.

Thanks Sunday - wondered when the details of this would appear. :dance:

Seems we have another tv performance to look forward to. :dance:

 

Originally Posted by jamief 1506

Will is due on Paul O Grady in the next few weeks. My mum went last week but didn't get in so they asked her to phone up for priority tickets. When she phoned yesterday for them she asked who was on over the coming weeks. They told her the only acts they knew of were Westlife, Cliff Richard and Will Young.....she went for Cliff

 

:lol:

Thanks for the Groove Armada info sunday, I'm looking forward to hearing the History track ft Will and thanks TT about

Will's upcoming appearance on Paul O'Grady. :D

Date for Paul O'Grady 15th December.

 

Thanks to sixpence.

Will is on radio 4 "Front Row" between 7.15 p.m. and 7.45 p.m this evening in connection with the short story competition.

 

Thanks to Tracey & Trish.

I've just got back so I've missed the radio 4 thingy.

I wasn't sure where to put this. It's a lovely interview in Dublin while he's on tour but it's a promo for the album too: :lol:

 

 

The will to win

 

http://www.independent.ie/multimedia/archive/00424/2711_willy_indo_424957t.jpg

 

By Declan Cashin

 

Friday November 27 2009

 

Will Young's rider has just arrived. It's a trolley brimming over with bottles of vodka, sachets of suspicious white powder, and DVDs of hardcore eastern European pornography.

I'm joking, of course. Nothing could be further from the public image of William Robert Young. He's the nice guy of pop: level-headed, sane, self-aware. The aforementioned rider is actually stocked with bottles of water, Coke (as in Coca-Cola), a variety of teas, honey and a heady stash of lemon and fresh ginger.

Young opens the door of his dressing room in the cramped upstairs section of Dublin's Olympia Theatre, where he was performing that night, and offers Day & Night a warm welcome in between chomps on a banana. He's dressed very -- dare I say it -- trendily, in a dark cardigan, long denim shorts and boots, and he is sporting some model-esque designer stubble.

He just got off the bus from Belfast where he was performing the night before. He is a little tired but good-humoured and unfailingly polite, offering to make tea or coffee with a passion that would make Father Ted's Mrs Doyle proud.

Settling himself on the sofa, Young admits that being back in Dublin for his Greatest Hits tour (more of that anon) has a nice professional and personal symmetry to it. "I spent a lot of time here at the start of my career," he says. "Dublin was my home away from home, really. I was working with Biff [songwriter Richard 'Biff' Stannard] who used to have a studio here.

"We stayed in the Clarence, but I used to spend a lot of time on my own. I'd go to cafés by myself, and go out on my own, which, in retrospect, was quite brave, because everything was so insane after Idol. I took up Irish dancing, too. The teacher's name was Olive Hurley. I did a few lessons -- I still have my shoes, in fact."

It's nearly eight years since Young, then a recent politics graduate, beat Gareth Gates in the final of the first ever Pop Idol (the pre-cursor to the all-conquering X Factor), and it's fair to say that he has enjoyed a level of success that the cynics and detractors of Simon Cowell's talent show format would never have predicted at the time. He has had four number ones, nine top-10 singles and won two Brit Awards.

Now aged just 30, Young has compiled his singles (plus two new ones) on a new album The Hits. "People might think that I'm retiring and that I should get a silver clock or something," he says, flashing that wide grin. "Releasing a greatest hits at this point would feel scary if I didn't have another album coming up. This album, though, feels more celebratory, and I normally don't do celebrations, so this is new for me."

Young recently returned to his reality show roots by helping Cheryl Cole to pick her final acts for the current series of X Factor. "I think people are less dismissive of performers who come through these shows than they were when I started," he says. "I don't say that out of bitterness at all, but there was a little snobbery. To be honest, I was my own worst critic. So if someone had told me, 'that's $h!t', then I'd have accepted that it was $h!t. I just decided to keep my head down and get on with it. I think that's all you can do if you really want to stick around in anything."

Over the past eight years there has been zero front-page-of-the-Sunday-tabloids/ falling-out-of-nightclubs scandal associated with Young. "If anything happens, it's not where people can see it," he jokes. "Besides, it's never that interesting."

The most attention he has received in his private life has concerned his own sexuality, and the personal difficulties of his twin brother Rupert. Young publicly came out as gay a month after winning Pop Idol in February 2002, and all to little or no negative comment then or since.

The late Stephen Gately had broken new ground for gay pop stars by disclosing his own homosexuality three years before that, but, perhaps surprisingly, Young reveals that he and Gately didn't know each other. "We met only once I think," he recalls.

Meanwhile, his brother Rupert very publicly battled with alcoholism and depression. Young has since revealed that Rupert once slit his wrists just as Will was preparing for his first live Pop Idol show in late 2001. For the next several years, Rupert's troubles became Will's, until finally his brother defeated his demons and founded a charity, the Mood Foundation, to help others going through similar problems.

Since then, Will has admitted to seeing a therapist to get his head around all that has happened. "I'm a big advocate of it," he begins, before hesitating. "I've probably talked about it too much, but I do so partly out of pride, because I'm so proud of what Rupert's done and what he's achieved.

"I don't care what people think about my own going to therapy, it's really worked for me. It's like if someone asks you to recommend a good mechanic to mend your car. That's why I talk about it."

Turning 30 in January has also helped to crystallise a lot of things in Young's head. "I remember after winning Pop Idol, I said to myself, 'You know what? If this finishes within a year, I can still say on my 30th birthday, "I f***ing did it, I tried. I won't regret not doing it'''. I could do without a few of the wrinkles or bags under my eyes, but I don't mind. I feel more chilled out now."

I joke about how the 30th birthday is considered "gay death". Young roars laughing. "Tell me about it! I was out a while ago, and I was talking to someone who was 20, and he asked how old I was. I told him, and he was like, 'Awww, that's alright.' I thought to myself, 'f***ing hell: so it begins!'"

Young reveals that he's single at the moment, adding that his fame has never been an impediment to forming or maintaining a relationship. "I actually always say that it makes easier to meet people," he says. "I'm the guy who doesn't get served at the bar even though I'm waving my £10 note in the air. I am that loser, so being famous is like a bit of an ice-breaker. If I said being famous makes relationships difficult, it's a bit of a cop-out. Relationships are always difficult, I think it's other stuff that makes them hard."

While we're on the topic, I mention how in the video for his new single, Hopes and Fears, Young appears as a pregnant man. Would he like kids some day? "Yes I'm very broody at the moment -- it's quite scary actually," he laughs. "It's at the point where I offered to buy my friend's kids the other day -- and he accepted, which is even scarier. But yes, at some point down the line I would like children."

In the meantime, Young has an ever-expanding career to focus on. In addition to singing, he's received glowing reviews for his acting work, first in the movie Mrs Henderson Presents, opposite Judi Dench, and then on stage in Noel Coward's The Vortex.

"I love it," he says. "I have two more things coming out: I have a Miss Marple and an episode of Skins, in which I felt very old and unattractive playing a teacher. It's a very funny role.

"There are no movies in the pipeline at the moment, but I'm slowly, steadily getting there. Next year I want to get some voice work done and go out to LA for a little bit. When people say they're going out to LA, what do they actually do? I'll just sit by the pool and meet one casting director, but I can still say, 'I'm going to LA'. It'll probably be $h!t, but it will be sunny $h!t."

Will Young: The Hits is out now on Sony Music

- Declan Cashin

Irish Independent

 

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/da...in-1956031.html

 

 

I joke about how the 30th birthday is considered "gay death". Young roars laughing. "Tell me about it! I was out a while ago, and I was talking to someone who was 20, and he asked how old I was. I told him, and he was like, 'Awww, that's alright.' I thought to myself, 'f***ing hell: so it begins!'"

:heehee:

Edited November 27, 200915 yr by munchkin

HISTORY

 

Writers:

COCUP ANDREW DEREK

FINDLAY THOMAS CHARLES

YOUNG WILLIAM ROBERT

 

Performers:

GROOVE ARMADA

 

Great to see that Will co wrote it

Thanks Sunday. Great to see he's putting that publishing deal to good use.

Thanks to Jeanette.

 

The best Will in the world

 

6:00am Saturday 5th December 2009

By Ian Ray »

As sure as autumn turns to winter, this year’s cohort of X Factor hopefuls will soon mount their annual assault on the Christmas charts before the almost inevitable slide into pop oblivion. Will Young – who is marking his seventh year in the business with a greatest hits compilation – is rather more charitable towards the reality show format that brought this well-mannered politics graduate to the country’s attention.

“I think it’s just the way of pop, and not so much about people from the shows,” he says of the brief shelf life of the likes of Shayne Ward and Michelle McManus.

“Think of the people who appear in the charts and then quickly go away again. I’ve had moments when I’ve charted high, and then really low; tours that have sold and tours that just haven’t. Putting this album together, you realise you really must have the songs... go with the right people and the right producers and work as hard as you can.”

It’s a combination of this willingness to roll up his sleeves and a frank realism about the fickle pop climate that has stood Young in good stead since he won the inaugural Pop Idol in 2002. He says he’d never anticipated the longevity he’s had, but worked hard to keep his plot in pop’s graveyard a vacant one for as long as possible.

“It’s what I was hoping for, of course, but the people I work with always had that long game in mind. I think the decisions we made from the beginning weren’t based on short-term financial gain or letting fame get the better of it all.”

It’s a relaxed, straightforward and friendly Young who speaks to me today, largely because he’s had some rare time off at his Brighton flat.

“I’ve had it for about 18 months and I love it there, but my only problem is that I don’t get to spend as much time there as I’d like.

“I’ve always enjoyed being by the sea and just find Brighton a relaxing place with a very free vibe and really friendly people.”

He’s also spent the past few days “eating pasties from the boot of the car” between surfing lessons on the Cornish coast.

“It was great to take a break because it’s been really busy recently, in a good way.

I’ve been judging a short story competition for the BBC, I did the X Factor recently [Young coached its male contestants] and I’ve been guest editing [gay lifestyle magazine] Attitude, so it’s been really varied and interesting. I think if it was the same thing every day I’d feel a bit stuck.”

He’s also been putting time in at the coal face on a new record, but it’s on the subject of his flowering second career as a thesp that Young is at his most animated. And with good reason; after a low-key start in 2005 film Mrs Henderson Presents, he went on to earn admiring reviews from sceptical critics for his role in Noel Coward’s The Vortex at Manchester’s Royal Exchange.

“That was a real learning experience,” he says.

“Just the fact that the audience changed each night, and some of them seemed to really like me. But God, some of them hated me.”

His latest forays into this new strain of performance have seen him take up roles in ITV’s new reading of Miss Marple and Channel 4 teen drama Skins.

“I felt very young in one and very old in the other! It’s been really important to show people I take it seriously. I think it’s quite an English thing to be suspicious of someone who wants to do different things, which isn’t the case in America. I don’t know why that is.

“Maybe people think you’re not giving all of yourself to one thing when you’re doing both, but people can love both cycling and something like German film. Nothing is mutually exclusive, and you can learn from anything creative. Look at someone like Kylie, who brings together modern dance, uber fashion and pop... and she used to be an actor.”

Perhaps it’s the newly- discovered love of the greasepaint, or his graduation to a more mature seam of pop with the release of Leave Right Now, but Will Young has become the only reality show escapee to be taken seriously enough to be invited to appear on “grown-up” shows such as Question Time and the South Bank Show.

His spot on the former saw a spike in the ratings unsurpassed until Nick Griffin made his infamous appearance.

“I hadn’t really done anything with politics since university, so I swotted up for two weeks to make sure I really knew what was going on. But it was still terrifying.”

Some people argue that music and politics should never mix...

“They’re probably right, but Question Time is different because you’re invited to give your opinion from the perspective of the world you’re from, whether that’s a pop culture view or whatever else. I loved it, and I’d definitely go on again. I got to use words like Dickensian, which felt very weird and out of context, but I managed to get them in anyway.”

Being one of Melvin Bragg’s interviewees on the recently-axed South Bank Show was also “a privilege”.

“But it was a bit of a worry because they announced it was being cancelled right after my show, so I though ‘S***! I’ve killed off the South Bank Show!’”

If his unsought reputation as a more serious pop proposition has brought him these appearances, then he is conspicuous by his absence from the nation’s red top papers and gossip mags; not since he came out in the wake of his success on Pop Idol has he been much of a tabloid fixture. Has that relative privacy been difficult to maintain?

“Not at all – I’m desperate for the profile, it’s just that no one wants to take my photo!” he laughs.

“I’d go to the opening of an envelope to get in a magazine, but I’ve had my time. I think I avoided a lot of the parties and things like that in the beginning because I felt like the new kid on the block with nothing to crow about. You know, ‘Who does he think he is?’. But after Leave Right Now, I thought: ‘I can hold my head high a bit more’... so I started accepting the free drinks.”

There’s likely to be plenty of opportunity as he sets off on a nationwide tour.

“We are literally doing all the hits on this one, which is kinda weird, because I haven’t sung [first single] Evergreen or Light My Fire for years. I’ve got much more confident in talking to the audience now – I was terrified of them for about five years.

“But the best thing about this gig will be going back to my own bed at the end of the night!”

 

http://www.theargus.co.uk/lifehealth/reall...l_in_the_world/

Edited December 8, 200915 yr by truly talented

Thanks for that article, TT. :)

Fom DS.

 

EXCLUSIVE: Writer: 'Will Young amazing on Skins'

Friday, December 11 2009, 09:51 GMT

 

By Dan French, US TV Editor

 

 

A writer on Skins has praised Will Young for his upcoming guest stint.

 

Georgia Lester, who has written for the E4 teen drama since its second series, told DS that the cast and crew were impressed with his acting.

 

"He is playing the school counsellor. Am I allowed to tell you that?! He's very funny. From what I've heard on set, everyone came away saying how amazing he was," she said.

 

"He's got some really funny quirks and he bonds a lot with one of our main characters, and helps that character at a time in need."

 

Pauline Quirke has also been confirmed as a guest star on the fourth series, which begins January on E4.

It's been lovely coming over here and to see Munchkins Christmas Banner made my night along with re-reading Will's fantastic reviews, so thanks for having me.

 

xx

It's been lovely coming over here and to see Munchkins Christmas Banner made my night along with re-reading Will's fantastic reviews, so thanks for having me.

 

xx

 

Lovely to see you Pauline. Don't forget to drop by more often.

Lovely to see you Pauline. Don't forget to drop by more often.

 

Yes Pauline, the more the merrier.

Aw! thanks you two for the warm welcome, back again, has you can see. Cannot wait to see Will on GN tonight, great to see The Hits on the up and up on Amazon..............happy days :D

Edited December 14, 200915 yr by luvyouwill

Lots of twitters about jason Manfords photo will Will :D

 

 

Jasons twitter ...talking about pre recording JR show today

 

 

Lovely Will Young is on too. http://twitpic.com/u0wnb

Thanks Sunday.

 

Had to look Jason Manford up on wikipedia. :blush: