He’s the trance titan whose band Faithless got the world raving. She’s the angel-voiced sister whose talent he couldn’t see. We talk euphoria and cancer with the Armstrongs
Rollo Armstrong is clearly not a man used to giving interviews. He’s not suspicious or wary – quite the opposite, he’s very friendly – but he has a pad with him that I get the feeling contains notes for him to refer to during his answers. When I get my phone out to record our conversation, he produces his own. Not, he says sheepishly, because he doesn’t trust the press, but because he wants to listen back afterwards and see how he’s done. Until now, he shrugs, “there’s never been a need for me to say anything about anything, really”.
It’s hard not to applaud Armstrong’s skill at avoiding the limelight so completely that his Wikipedia page comes accompanied by a photo that looks like it was taken while he was still at university. He is, after all, a member of a band who, at the last count, had sold something like 15m records worldwide: Faithless, whose supercharged, stadium-packing take on late 90s club
music, most notably trance and what used to be called epic house, has a claim to presage the rise of EDM, of which more later.