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 the go! team interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.White noise cinerama from the Brighton six-piece. When McDonald’s approached The Go! Team about the possibility of using a piece of their high-octane, sampledelic, guitar-meets-hip-hop electronica for one of its diktats – oops, sorry - adverts, bandleader Ian Parton didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.“I felt that they had interpreted the happiness in the music as commercial sounding,” Parton recalls, shuddering. “I was disappointed because we had deliberately f**ked up elements of the music to distance ourselves from things like CD:UK.” Understandably, Parton is being overly precious. His Brighton-based troupe certainly bear no resemblance to the performing chimps who comprise the majority of that show’s entertainers: something to which their debut album, the suitably entitled Thunder Lightning Strike, more than attests. Continuing the action-packed theme that their name - especially that exclamation mark - and breakthrough EP (last year’s Junior Kickstart on Memphis Industries) allude to, Thunder… contains more ideas in its jam-packed 35 minutes than most groups manage in a career’s worth of material. Combining cut ‘n’ paste hip-hop, melodic 60s-themed cinerama, discordant white noise and funk-flecked electro, The Go! Team’s chaotic musical couplings are a result of wishing to swim against the prevailing tide.  “I’m a fusspot with music,” Parton boasts. “I would never be content with The Go! Team being just another guitar band. We need something more exciting, especially in this climate of Keane and Embrace and their indie ballads.” This celebration of difference extends to the make-up of the band. Although Parton nominally writes all the music, the six-piece he has constructed displays none of the aesthetical insularity he rallies against. Split down the middle in terms of gender, singer Ninja comes from a hip-hop background while the guitars are couched in post-rock dynamics. “It’s freestyle,” laughs Ian. “When we perform live there’s a real visual intensity. There are two girl drummers and we swap instruments all the time. It’s all about surprising people.” And that includes burger-munching, bed-wetting, indie fat boys.
Jim Butler
The Go! Team – Thunder Lightning Strike, released 13 September 04 on Memphis Industries.
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