thunder lightning strike is fantastic, but their newest record is just more of the same and kind of a snoozer.
The Go! Team is great. I got the chance to interview Ian Parton before they played Red Rocks with Ween and The Flaming Lips a couple summers back. Here's the article I wrote (unedited version). Tailgate parties are fun and all, but they are no match for the first act in the one-two-three power combo that will be taking the stage at Red Rocks Amphitheater this Saturday. When 7 PM rolls around, the show is going to start and you will have but two options: either you can be counted among those who will have their metaphorical asses handed to them by The Go! Team’s high energy, high density, audio-collage conception of what dance music should be, or you can be among the lazy bastards who will drink an extra two beers in a dusty, gravelly parking lot and then spend the rest of their bitter lives enduring descriptions of how great the show was and regretting deliriously that they missed it. In the end, the decision is yours alone, but in the beginning, and by beginning I mean right now, it is my solemn duty to explain to you the greatness of the Go! Team. The Go! Team is opening for Ween and The Flaming Lips at Red Rocks. So, already they are off to a pretty good start. Take that and multiply it by the fact that their primary vocalist is a female rapper from the U.K. named Ninja, and she is only one of six multi-talented musicians that make up the team. Touche, Go! Team, touche. Then, extrapolate that by the fact that their founder and main songwriter, Ian Parton, describes his music as “kind of manic with lots going on, so you’re battered into submission.” Need I say more? The music of the Go! Team is the kind of stuff that is nearly impossible not to dance to. Part of the reason for that is that many of the songs are centered around old jump rope chants and cheer leading routines, which must somehow resonate with some ancient universal rhythm. I mean think about it… Parton says that his creative process often starts by “just wading through records, you know charity shop stuff or…double Dutch films or cheerleading films…and I hear something that I like or something that sticks in my head and I think, ‘alright, that’s it, that’s a good starting point for a song.’” On top of these schoolyard energy inducing beginnings, Parton piles layer after layer and track after track of his own melodies and rhythms, mixed even further with samples from old Bollywood movies, as well as instrumental impressions of what Sonic Youth playing a car chase theme might sound like. “There are particular kinds of reference points” said Parton, explaining his relationship with the samples he chooses, “things I really admire from the very early days of hip-hop when it was quite street corner-based and there was that kind of experimental side to hip-hop, or through to Phil Specter, girl group sounds…” The list goes on and on. The Go! Team’s distinct early-technology, rough-around-the-edges sound, does not come about accidentally. In the studio, the instrumentation is always recorded first and then played back so it doesn’t sound too clean. “On the record,” said Parton, “you can’t really tell what’s sampled and what isn’t, which is something that I quite like the idea of…I want to keep that kind of energy. I like the idea of things sounding like they’re home-recorded rather than a lavish Abbey Road style of production, if you know what I mean.” Parton’s goal in all of this is quite a lofty one: to define a new genre of music. “I think that people are finding it harder and harder to discover a new sound,” said, Parton, “but I think the answer might be in getting all the best hits of the past and making something new out of it.” That, in combination with his various sound experiments like mixing “recorders with electrodrums,” he explained, “are all things that I’ve invented before and I want to try and get there first.” Despite all the sampling and production work that gives the Go! Team’s music its unique sound, the group was always intended to be a live act. Some of their songs, like “Lady Flash might have 15 samples on it, or power is on has about 15,” guessed Parton, while others, “like Get it Together…or Feel Good by Numbers, or Friendship Update, are all pretty much live songs,” explained Parton. For anyone who, after hearing all of that, is not absolutely determined to close up the coolers and head into the venue in time to see The Go! Team, you are simply beyond help, and this writer refuses to waste anymore time on you. Nope--no! That’s it. Good bye. We’re finished.
