TF Archives

Groove Corporation's Elephant House

Author: Will @ TranZFusion
Thursday, March 21, 2002
Remember when producers used to release their own albums- Then DJs started putting together compilations or mixes of someone else's stuff, occasionally using unreleased remixes. Now we have artists whose entire trip is re-jigging other people's original work. Artists like Groove Corporation. These guys, once known as Electribe 101, are professional knob twiddlers in the best sense of the term. Over the years they've been asked to stuff around with some all-time classic tunes, such UB40s Legalise It and Dillinger's Cocaine in my Brain. Their latest release, Remixes from the Elephant House, brings together these and a whole bunch of other spliffed out, downtempo tracks reincarnated in their house of audio-toys. They subjected themselves to a little QnA from Tranzfusion....

TRANZFUSION: How did you go about assembling the tracks for this album ...were they tracks you'd already been commissioned to do or did you request specific tracks you wanted for this compilation-

GROOVE CORPORATION: The LP is a collection of some of the remix's we have been commissioned to do, except Concrete Jungle which is an unreleased track of our own and Peace Time which is something we made as a special for our own sound system (Overproof Sound System). The tracks were chosen to create some kind of flow to the LP. A volume two will follow shortly.

T: What's the dub/reggae scene like in your hometown, Birmingham-
GC: The scene in Birmingham is good, Rockers Hi Fi, Mighty Math, Different Drummer, we also run a club night called 'Overproof'. There are also several illegal sessions that run regular.

T: How do you decide which bits to keep and what to dump when remixing a track-
GC: We generally decide the main theme if it is a vocal track then obviously it would be the vocal, if it were an instrumental then we would start with the main hook. We tend not to use much more than that from the original - we like to give something a totally different feel when we remix at the same time hopefully making the song still work.

T: Do you ever get a little scared messing around with tracks by the likes of Bob Marley or Ennio Morricone-
GC: No we don't take a remix on unless we think we can do something good and in the case of heroes like Marley etc it is not scared that we feel but absolute childish excitement.

T: Do you think its much easier trying to work out how to do something new with an old track than building up a song from scratch-
GC: Each case is different, we work totally on vibe we don't plan a mix or one of our own tracks which means sometimes things happen quickly with a flow of inspiration, and some times that inspiration can lead you into days and days of work as in the case of Dillinger we made a groove that we wanted to sit the vocal on but the original recording sounded like it was truly fuelled by the white stuff the band and the vocal went from 85 bpm to 115 bpm at random so it was four days hard work to sit the vocal word by word, still no pain no gain or at least that was what we kept telling ourselves to get through.

T: Do you ever get sick of being compared to Kruder and Dorfmeister-
GC: We didn't know we were being compared to them so no, we also realize that people need reference points when trying to describe music in words and as a reference point Kruder and Dorfmeister is fine.

T: Have you turned down offers to remix a song because you didn't like the original-
GC: Yes this happens often. We learnt a long time ago that trying to work on something you are not into is hell, and lets face it the whole reason fore making music is doing something you love to do. Some time ago we were talked into doing something we didn't want to do by a friend at a major label we started it and spent a week or so messing around with it then looking at each other and saying "this sounds shit" unfortunately we stopped before it was finished and had to send it back much to the dismay of the label but from then on we have never attem
Tags