Groove Terminator: Brown Sound.

GT launched (This Is Not A) Lovesong at Monastery on Wednesday. 

Groove Terminator, GT to some, Simon Lewicki to his mum, has been through many incarnations along the Australian dance music trajectory. From his debut single, the kinda progressive anthem Losing Ground, to his childhood association with DJ HMC, founder of Dirty Records down in Adelaide, to his commercial success with The Sunshine Song, his ‘homage’ to Fatboy Slim – GT has never stayed still long enough to pigeonhole. And then he’ll go and do a DJ set that will make you re-think everything you knew about him. Take the latest single for example, a rather dangerous and dark cover version of the seminal PiL track (this is not a) Lovesong. Some will say GT has cracked it, others will say he is just cracked. It’s a scary piece of music, all moody and frantic with a devastatingly catchy hook underpinning the shrieks and moans of vocalist Megan Brown. Even the film clip is a step into ‘art’ territory, featuring scantily clad gals that look like models from The Face caught in FFWD, all deconstructed and distressed looking. Tres punk chique 2002. 

GT concedes that doing a cover of anyone’s song is a risk. 

“We did a whole bunch of different versions of it.” He explains from his Sydney studio. “I played it out and got a really good reaction from it and it felt like I would be able to do it justice. I mean, it’s not like I’m cashing in on it. I remember the song from when I was little and it was a good thing for me ‘cause it was like a proto-house track. Basically, what it said to me, I wanted it to have that effect on a whole bunch of new people. To be honest, I’m not too fussed about what Mr Lydon (John ‘Johnny Rotten’ Lydon from PiL) thinks of it, I mean I’d be really disappointed if he liked it. It would not be him.”

And word has it that the new GT album Electrifying Mojo will be taking some new, urbane directions, directions already alluded to in the current single. Will Electrifying Mojo be the name of the album? “That’s the title unless he tells me I can’t use it.” Who is this phantom ‘he’?  

“He’s a DJ. He’s a Detroit DJ from the late 70’s, he inspired the people that inspired me to start making music.” 

Does that inspiration translate better in the studio then while DJing? And what of the often-frustrating nature of being an artist with an expectation to move units? 

“I quite enjoy the studio. I did a lot of promotion for the last record and I gotta say I really do enjoy just being in the studio and not having to do stuff, but I’m signed to a major and that’s just part of it. I’m pretty full on about what I will and won’t do, I let people guide me before and I will not let any of that happen now. But I have been roped into doing things that I haven’t been happy about doing, you just try and grin and bear it.” 

Grin and take it he does. GT has been spotted on many an occasion happily entertaining fans while at festivals. In fact, I once saw a gaggle of teens wobble up to the incredibly approachable Mr Terminator and gush that they would love his autograph. I mention that GT handled the situation with aplomb. 

“I think if someone is gonna ask me for an autograph, I’m just really fortunate that they dig what I do enough to want that. I’m one of those people who look’s at the other side of the coin, and I wonder if I was in that position and I was being an arsehole, I would be absolutely shattered. It takes a lot of balls to go up to someone and ask for an autograph. When we had Arthur Baker over here for the BDO, I was speechless, it was me and a couple of the other DJs and we’d get within three feet of him and just go ‘Ohhh’ and walk away…” 

So tell our loyal readers, what was the last celebrity to give the great GT shit? “I met James Brown when I was about 17 or something and we had seen the show and gone back to the hotel with some records that we wanted him to sign. This actually burnt me off ever getting records signed by people… I had like Japanese bootlegs and we went running up to him, but you can’t actually talk to him, and you can’t look him in the eye and you can only call him Mr Brown, I was like ‘Oh Mr Brown, I’m a really big fan, can you please sign my record’. And he’s talking how he does, all freaked out on crystal meth, and he took the record and he broke it in two and called me a thief and said I was robbing him of his livelihood. I was like ‘Jesus Christ, I paid $50 for that!’ What a prick. He had these issues and he took it out on me, a poor kid. I was so scared of going up to him… I never played one of his records again.”