Andy Cato on selling his Groove Armada music rights to buy a farm, why he still DJs, & his weirdest sync request

From the dance floors of Ibiza to the fields of his farm, Andy Cato’s journey is a rare blend of creative ambition and sustainable living. Away from the decks as one half of Groove Armada, Cato has embraced a radically different life. He explains why he sold his rights to his Groove Armada catalogue to acquire a 100-hectare farm.

After what many feared was a farewell run of shows in 2022, fans are still delighted that they can still catch the duo at numerous festivals. “We've done a lot of gigs this year – probably about 70,” estimates Cato, speaking to Headliner following Groove Armada’s recent headline set at Lakefest, which took place in a stunning valley beneath the Malvern Hills, within the impressive grounds of Eastnor Castle.

“So it’s as busy as it’s ever been, to be honest. The only thing we stopped doing were the live band gigs,” he clarifies. “We first stopped back in 2010 and then, for various reasons, we did it one more time. Not helped by the fact that I’ve got this fairly all-consuming focus on bringing regenerative farming to the high street through Wildfarmed, which takes up a lot of my time. So the era of three-month tours, which is what playing live with the band requires, just doesn’t really work anymore.”

He reveals that while most of his time is dedicated to farming these days, the other half of Groove Armada, Tom Findlay, has also found an alternative career as a therapist. 

“So I think the days of months on the road had to be drawn to a close after 15 amazing years,” he smiles. “But from the start, back in ’96, we’ve always been DJing – that’s never changed. That’s still the case today, and it’s an enormous privilege to still be doing it, 30-odd years later.”

Billed as the fastest-growing family festival in the UK, this year Lakefest attracted revellers young and old with acts as eclectic as Faithless, Busted, Groove Armada, and Echo & The Bunnymen. Cato is thrilled to be reaching new audiences decades into his music career.

“We’ve got this completely new, youthful crowd who’ve discovered not just the tunes, but the kind of party we create when we play together, which is a fairly unique blend that crosses the decades. At the same time, we’ve got this elder statesman vibe, because, well, we are,” he laughs. 

“Over the years, we’ve evolved into this four-deck, effects-driven DJ thing that lets us really get a party going – but in a way that uses a lot of unexpected, more underground tunes. It’s a really enjoyable place to be.”

Groove Armada sets have always balanced deep club culture with mass-appeal anthems. Cato reveals how they decide what makes it onto the setlist for a festival crowd in 2025: they decide on the spot.

“It radically changes, and nothing is decided before we start, other than how we’re going to kick things off, and even that’s usually worked out on the side of the stage just before we go on,” he grins. “Pretty much everything we play these days is an edit, but there are a few that work really well and we use them as anchors throughout the set. The rest of it is about reading the room, which is as much a part of the art of DJing as anything else.

“We’ve played sets under 35 beats per minute going on after garage DJs in fields east of London,” he uses as an example, “and we’ve also played deep disco sets in the weirder corners of Glastonbury and everything in between. It’s a lot of fun switching between those things, depending on what the moment calls for.”

During their Lakefest set, they demonstrated that this is indeed the house that funk built, Groove Armada style – which, to the delight of the audience, was teased multiple times throughout, before the inevitable payoff of I See You Baby in full, which had the crowd erupting into a frenzy.

The set was a joy to behold: a pulsating, laser-lit masterclass in dancefloor energy. Red and white beams cut through the night as the duo unleashed a pulsating, relentless mix of their own hits and dance classics like You've Got The Love and Strike‘s U Sure Do – each drop perfectly synced with the lighting. But it was Superstylin’ – teased throughout the set before finally unleashed in its full glory – that sent hands skyward and strobe lights into overdrive.

“The balance we’re always trying to strike is this: people work hard, they come to these things, it costs them a fair bit of money, and our overriding responsibility is to make that hour and a half as special as we can,” says Cato on deciding how much of a track to give away before the big drop.

“It’s really important not to lose sight of that, and not to get too cool for school or just do whatever we feel like. It’s about understanding how we can make it special for the greatest number of people in the field, or wherever we’re playing. But you don’t want to do that just by playing everything obvious. That might get something going, but it’s a sugary kind of satisfaction – there’s no depth to it. 

"The balance we’re constantly trying to strike is using snippets of familiar tunes, not just ours but other people’s as well, as a way to move into deeper sections while keeping a sense of anticipation. This is where DJing gets really interesting, and where the 30-year alchemy between the two of us comes in, which is really fun. We both have the same instinct about what we’re trying to create, and we use all the tools we’ve picked up over the years to make it happen.”

Headliner inquires if they truly only plan the first song they play; what about the closing track? For those expecting Groove Armada to finish a set with solid crowd favourites, I See You Baby or Superstylin’ – think again.

“It does vary,” he considers. “This summer, we’ve been finishing a lot of sets with an absolutely beautiful tune by Lovebirds called Want You In My Soul. It’s gorgeous and, in house music terms, more of a love song, but a really beautiful one. At some point in the set, we’ll usually have a chat, once we’ve got a feel for it, about how we should end. We’ve been closing with that, or with Fleetwood Mac, a bit of Superstylin’, and all sorts of other things. 

"Like anything, though, whether it’s a speech, a DJ set or even a football match, the last 15 minutes are critical,” he stresses. “We always go into that last section knowing what we’re aiming for. We’re also very careful about timing, making sure we don’t run over, with promoters stressing and speakers being cut off. No one wants to end like that. Getting that last stretch right is just as important to us as nailing the exact moment the sun dips below the horizon in a sunset set.”

Formed in 1994 after Cato met Findlay through a mutual friend in Cambridge – his girlfriend at the time, now his wife, Jo – Groove Armada quickly rose through the UK club scene. The duo achieved chart success with singles such as At the River, I See You Baby, and Superstylin', and have released nine studio albums, four of which charted in the UK top 50.

Released in 1999, I See You Baby featured the soulful vocals of Gram’ma Funk and quickly became one of Groove Armada’s most iconic tracks. The song took on a life of its own through a series of remixes, most notably by Fatboy Slim, whose version received heavy radio airplay and became synonymous with a Renault Megane TV campaign in 2003. Another remix, by Futureshock, found its own fame as the theme tune for MTV Cribs from 2000 onwards.

Over two decades on, I See You Baby continues to resonate, proving its enduring appeal both on the dance floor and in pop culture. Cato says he never could have predicted the life the song went on to have in the TV sync music world.

“We had no idea about any of it; we never had a master plan,” he admits. “I don’t know if it was for that track, but the weirdest sync request I can remember was the US Navy wanting to use one of our songs for a recruitment drive. Suffice to say, that was a no. We were just making music we liked, DJing at parties where we could, and then figuring out how to try and play dance music live,” he reflects. 

“We worked hard at it, and we got lucky. I could never have foreseen any of this. In fact, I See You Baby was apparently David Byrne from Talking Heads’ first dance tune at his recent wedding. I definitely couldn’t have predicted that one!”

Decks-to-Dirt

Farming is now Cato’s full-time focus (you might have spotted him in a recent episode of Clarkson's Farm), and balancing the demands of farm life with performing live has shifted his perspective. After selling the rights to his Groove Armada tracks, Cato acquired a 100-hectare farm in the UK, where he now grows organic no-till crops and raises livestock on pasture.

“It was mad,” he says of his decision to sell the rights to his music. At the time, I was living in France and had a bit of a garden, so I started trying to grow vegetables, and went down what you could only call a spectacularly deep rabbit hole. On the way back from a gig, I read an article about the environmental consequences of food production. I’d never thought much about it before, and it was pretty sobering, to be honest. It had a line in it which said, ‘If you don’t like the system, don’t depend on it.’ That was very inspiring.”

Before long, all of Cato’s reading became horticultural and agricultural. “Then I made the mad decision to sell my publishing rights to finance the purchase of a farm, to try and do it at scale. What followed was a very humbling lesson in how hard it is to be a farmer: how difficult it is to grow food on degraded soils, which most of our food-producing soils are; how lonely farming can be; and how, when you sell your produce, the only measure is weight, with no recognition of quality, or how it was grown, or anything else.”

Cato very quickly went from feeling excited to realising that he was in way over his head: “I was at the point where nothing was really working: the farmhouse was completely overrun with weeds, and I was overwhelmed by the sheer range of skills needed to be a farmer. It was actually a very dark time,” he nods, adding that he counts himself lucky that he could still go and play records on Ibiza’s The Space Terrace to avoid going bankrupt.

“It was exhausting,” he reflects, adding that what turned things around was a chance encounter with a misfiled book that set him on the path to understanding how farmers could grow food in ways that restore quality, nature, water, and farmer livelihoods. “From that point on, I started doing my own research and development, and slowly built something we’re now trying to scale with Wildfarmed.”

The legacy of those difficult early days has never left Cato, and it took him the best part of a decade to come through that and to work out a way of growing food that combines production with nature restoration. Today, Wildfarmed is a community of farmers focused on growing wheat the right way, making regenerative flour and bread that tastes better, and crucially, that is better for people and for the planet. Wildfarmed partners with bakeries, restaurant chains, supermarkets and over 100 growers. Cato is proud of what they have achieved so far:

“We've built this farming community – it’s actually 150 growers now – with an amazing network of peer-to-peer learning,” he says. “We support them in every way we can, helping them embrace a way forward that makes them less dependent on inputs, hopefully more financially stable, and builds resilience for their farm businesses.

“None of this is easy, because we’ve got a food system now that comes with all sorts of costs – climate, nature, water, health – which we all end up paying for as taxpayers. Those costs don’t appear on the spreadsheet when it comes to the price of food,” he points out. “The fundamental thing we’re trying to do, in the best way we can, is figure out how to redefine what we value. Our system often confuses value with importance, and we’re trying to solve that.”

Though he’s busy running the farm, the Groove Armada name continues to lure him back to the stage each year. The stark difference in his two ‘day jobs’ is not lost on him:

“I have very surreal moments,” he nods, “going from being in Ibiza at 5am to speaking at the Labour Party conference about farming at 5pm the next day. I could give you dozens of examples of how weird my life is, but the Groove Armada gigs are a big part of it. 

"It’s an enormous privilege to be in the middle of a moment of togetherness, and I’ve been lucky enough to do this for a long time. There’s a period in life when it feels like all those weekend moments will be infinite, and now I’m very aware that they’re finite, so I really treasure them.

On top of that, Tom’s been my best mate for 30 years,” he adds. “I love hanging out with him. Doing all of this is a real release from the day-to-day stresses, strangers, and everything else.”

Groove Armada Lakefest photos: Adam Gasson