The Go! Team

The Go!Team are the product of a young man spending too much time in his bedroom. Instead of tossing away his spare time embroiled in self-abuse, sometime documentary maker Ian Parton busied rifling through his eclectic record collection like a happy sonic magpie. Using old-skool hip-hop culture as a basis Parton mashed together live instrumentation with a bundle of feel-good samples from a charity-shop inspired vinyl collection. The resulting album, Thunder, Lightning, Strike was swiftly snapped up by local Brighton label Memphis Industries – and Parton gathered together a live band from a mixture of contacts and adverts.

The Go!Team became guitarist Sam Dook, bassist Jamie Bell, multi-instrumentalist Silke Steidinger (since replaced by Kaori) drummer Chi Fukami – and most tellingly vocalist Ninja. In keeping with Parton’s philosophy, whilst Ninja is not the greatest singer in the world her infectiously engaging personality makes her the vitally likeable focus of the band.Having played gigs throughout the world, the band gathered real momentum throughout 2005, with their summery brand of dance going down particularly well over a series of festival appearances following a surprise Mercury Music Award nomination. Sony were impressed enough to snap up Memphis Industries, who insisted Parton revise his previous laissez-faire attitude to clearing samples - which meant none of Thunder, Lightning, Strikes samples had been actually been cleared or paid for. A kosher re-recorded version of the LP thus emerged and got a big label re-rerelease in late 2005. A new version of Ladyflash gained wide-spread exposure in early 2006, accompanied by a video featuring some ground-breaking animations inspired by the free games you used to get with a new Sinclair Spectrum +2.

However, despite their swiftly accrued critical and commercial success Parton insists The Go!Team have a finite life-span. As he told The Guardian recently, "I gave my day job up last year. I see this as an interval before going back to it. No one wants to see an old man rocking out. I think 34 is the cut-off point. I'm not intending to retire on the proceeds of the Go! Team."

Photo by: Shirlaine Forrest