The Go! Team: Finding Their Way
By: Ian Pointer |
Sunday August 07, 2005 |
| The Go! Team burst onto the music scene late in 2004, their album "Thunder, Lightning, Strike" being a joyful jumble sale mixture. |
| "Is Ky gonna do her song?"
After a brief discussion, Ky, the drummer of The Go! Team, steps out from behind her drums, and performs a gentle, simple ballad during the soundcheck for tonight's concert at the Oxford Zodiac. She looks slightly embarrassed, and a little uneven, but it's very sweet, and sounds completely different from anything else I've heard from the band. The Go! Team burst onto the music scene late in 2004, their album Thunder, Lightning, Strike being a joyful jumble sale mixture of Bollywood, film soundtracks, dance, and rap. It's the brainchild of Ian Parton, who spent over two years working on the album; creating the band, consisting of Silke, Ky, Jamie, Sam, Ninja, and himself. Now they're on tour, performing the seemingly impossible task of bringing the album to a live audience. Feted by critics, and currently being chased by major labels (as of this week, it appears that Columbia Records has won their hearts and minds), I sat down with Ninja, Jamie and Sam before the concert to ask them a few questions. You've just got back from America. How was it? Ninja: It was really good, actually. There were loads and loads of bands playing, but the day after we played, the New York Times had a big picture of us. They could have chosen over a thousand bands and they put a big picture of The Go! Team there. That was flattering. We had a really good response; apparently there were hundreds of people lining up around the block trying to get inside our gig. It was nice; the album hasn't been officially released in America yet, but there was all these people supporting us. How did the band come about? Jamie: In varying ways. Ian [Parton] wrote and recorded all the songs, and wanted to perform them live; I played some stuff and got in touch with him. He knew Sam already. Ninja: I saw an advert that he was looking for an old-school hip-hop rapper, so I applied for that; Ky is a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend (laughs), and I think Silke saw an advert as well. One day we met for a rehearsal, and everybody met each other there for the first time. A lot of people have commented on the childlike and nostalgic nature of how Thunder, Lightning, Strike sounds. Was that intentional? Jamie: It wasn't intentional. It upsets Ian a bit, actually, people who get a hold of this aspect. Everybody has different interpretations. Ninja: It's just loads of different types of music he likes and loads of different sounds. What he wanted to was to try and do was to prove that you could put it all together, even if they're all from different genres, and it just happens to turn out like that, but it wasn't deliberate. How does it feel being an acclaimed act? Jamie: It's...interesting. Ninja: It hasn't really hit me yet. We're normal people going about our normal lives who happen to go on stage sometimes. It doesn't feel like the way they make it look on TV. It doesn't feel like we've seen the glamourous side of it yet. It's just flattering that we're being notices, and that people are saying good thing s about what we've done so far. Jamie: The photos are often unpleasant. Ninja: Yeah! Always taken at low angles, so you see the nostrils and chin! Is it hard performing the album live? Jamie: Not really. We used samples still in the live set, but it's a pretty different sound to the record. Ninja: We use instruments laid on top of samples; otherwise we'd need forty or fifty people on stage! Do you have a live favourite? Ninja: I really like "Huddle Formation." It reminds me of 60s pop-rock, really energetic, and hard to perform live. Sam: I quite like that one too. Ninja: Actually, that's a song that we doesn't use any samples on when we're playing live. How is life on tour treating you all? Jamie: It's really new for all of us. Sam: Takes a bit of getting used to, to get in the rhythm of it. It's been quite fractured, really; we're holding down jobs as well. Trying to do it all has been quite exhausting. And who turns up to the concerts? Ninja: At the moment, it's an indie crowd, 25-40. We had some older people come up to us once afterwards and said how much they'd enjoyed the show. We're lucky to get an older audience; most bands aim for the teenyboppers. The older audience will hopefully listen to it at a different level than younger ones, because they'll appreciate the creativity that's gone into it. Does that mean that you can't see yourself going down the fame route? Ninja: We're quite lucky, because we all agree on that, that we don't want to go on Top of The Pops or CD:UK [mainstream UK TV music shows]; commercial shows like that drive you into a different market, and we have quite a bit of respect from the underground. We don't want to be a brand or marketed. We want people to listen to the music, and like it for what it is rather than because they see it in every magazine, TV show, or advert. I assume that means that you're not all that keen on licensing out your music to other companies then? Jamie: It's not out of the question. We've had offers. We'd have to be very careful about it; adverts specifically we wouldn't really be into, but maybe films. But it'd be all about making sure it was what we wanted to do. Are there plans for a new album? Jamie: Ian comes up with ideas and has to assemble them. It's a gradual process, until he has a bunch of songs that he's happy with. Ninja: It's ongoing. Stuff is always in the pipeline. The second album won't take as long as the first, but it is still going to be a process. We do have a couple of new songs that we perform live, so the new album is unofficially in the making. Jamie: It's not really a case of us all going off to the studio for two months and making an album. Songs will turn up, and we'll record them in dribs and drabs. Nowadays, we can record mostly at home, only going into the studio to polish it up a little. Any thoughts on the Internet and music downloading? Ninja: Evil! EVIL! (laughs). I've just got this thing, you know, about music being a physical object that you can hold in your hand. You can have a favourite record and blow the dust off it, or have CDs and swap them. When music isn't physical, it's really different. In fifty years' time, no-one going to have CDs or records; your whole collection is going to be in an MP3 player. Sam: What I like is that you can use it to sample, then go and buy the record, and I think that's what a lot of people end up doing. Jamie: I think it's helped us. Especially in America. The record isn't out there, yet we had all those people - they must have heard of us through the Internet. Finally, what's your favourite sandwich? Ninja: My favourite sandwich is only out in December, which is really annoying. It's turkey with cranberry sauce and stuffing. And when January comes, you just can't find it any more. Sam: A bit of mozzarella, a bit of basil, and tomato. Jamie: I'll go for bacon and avocado. Sam: Mmmm, a bit of avocado too as well... Two hours later, and The Go! Team take to the stage, full of energy. Ninja works the crowd up into a frenzy, giving shouts out to random people in the crowd who she thinks are dancing well, and indulging in a call-and-response competition between the men and woman, which goes down very well. As promised, they play two new songs: "We Just Won't Be Defeated," boasting an anthemic chorus, and the final song of the evening is so new that it doesn't even have a name. This is probably one of the ones that's still in production, as it's little more than an extended freak-out rather than a proper song at the moment, but as a way of closing the concert, it works remarkably well. Just like in the soundcheck, Ky heads to the front to sing her song, entitled "Hold Yr Terror Close," which we're informed comes from the Japanese release of Thunder, Lightning, Strike. Incredibly nervous, she falters, and loses her way a little, but the crowd gives as much encouragement as it can. Ky finishes, running back behind the drums, head in hands, but she gets a huge round of applause anyway. The party culminates in "Bottle Rocket." Before it begins, Ninja announces that it's going to be their summer single, and you can clearly see why. There's just so much summer and joy wrapped up in this song, and the final "2-4-6-8" breakdown that occurs at the end is the sonic equivalent of eating 10 bags of pop rocks and chasing them down with a can of Coke. I have a tinge of regret as the song ends; it's such a wonderful record, but I wonder whether the band's underground stance will prevent it from being the summer hit it clearly deserves to be. But as "Ladyflash" kicks in, those concerns fade, as the band, the crowd, everyone, has a great time dancing as the night comes to an end, courtesy of the fantastic sounds of The Go! Team. |
