Extra Go!

THOUGH he founded the band, Ian Parton insists there’s no I in Team. Of the six members of the Brighton-based outfit, he probably ranks as the alpha male with much of the song-writing stemming from his hand. But this is no musical dictatorship.

“I write the songs, but I have always said if you want to write a song go for it and if you want to look for samples, help me,” said Parton as The Go! Team prepare to play at Newcastle’s Cluny on Sunday on the back of their third album, Rolling Blackouts.

Joining Parton on stage will be Sam Dook, Chi Fukami Taylor, Kaori Tsuchida, Jamie Bell and Ninja, all of whom have served to make the band one of Britain’s best-kept musical secrets.

Fusing indie with dance, chanting and rap, among other flavours, The Go! Team have a rich pool from which to tap.

“I am curious to know people’s ideas. I kind of field opinion and then act on it if I agree,” said Parton.

“Our bassist is quite vocal about the production and that kind of thing and often we see eye to eye on all that. It’s a combination, but everyone has their own projects as well so there are outlets for their own ideas.”

Parton’s influences are, as you might expect, wide and varied. “I’ve often thought it’s about things you’ve liked across your life,” he said. “Hip-hop culture, movie soundtracks, noisy guitars. I have always had an obsession with distortion and I have also loved trumpets – I have always thought trumpets were underused and should be reclaimed and made better somehow, more tough, more mean.

“I have always loved gang vocals and Riot Grrrl, girl groups and Phil Spector and the whole kind of teenage pop thing. I guess it’s all these kinds of competing ideas at the same time. It’s not a conscious thing to be eclectic, but I think the effect, hopefully, is that it sounds like The Go! Team.”

Certainly their sound is distinctive, even if Parton sometimes tries his best to be anything but.

“Sometimes I actively say I am going to make a song that doesn’t sound like The Go! Team and it still flipping does. I don’t know what it is, but there is obviously something melodically about me, something in my tastes, that means it always kind of comes through.”

It’s been around three years since The Go! Team’s last album, but Parton believes it’s been worth the wait.

“We did lots of touring after Proof of Youth, stupid places around the world. Having a kid, me being a slow worker and it just being quite hard music to make as well all contributed,” he said.

What the time lapse has served to do is ensure the Rolling Blackouts is an organic sounding, rather than manufactured album.

“I think that is important for all music really,”

says Parton. “There’s nothing worse than a band that is panicking, not that we ever were, and who are desperate to cling on to their record deal.

“We have got into the position where we are kind of unsackable, plus we are not trying to be really big, we are not aiming to be a stadium band.”

That might be the case, but it does not mean that Parton is not seeking some form of recognition for his and the band’s efforts.

“You obviously want people to hear you. I do think we are underrated a bit. I think people get sidelined or journalists focus on the throwaway dimension of it,” he said. “I think pop music is really hard to write. I don’t even know if I would call us a pop band, but I am definitely interested in catchiness, melody and that sort of stuff.

“They will call us a sample-based, party band from Brighton, but there are so many ways of doing that. It could be a good sample-based song or a bad sample-based song and, actually, on this record we didn’t use that many. There might be this perception that we grab a sample, put a beat to it and call it a song, where it’s really not that at all.”

Such is the richness and complexity, at times, of The Go! Team’s music, that performing live presents its own challenges, challenges that Parton, however, is happy to take on.

“We are not slavish. We could never replicate it perfectly,” he admits. “We had Chuck D (Public Enemy) on the second record and we couldn’t really take him on the road with us. So we always adapt to the stage. But there’s six of us in the band and we all play lots of different instruments so we are in the position where we can swap around.”

However it comes out, what is certain is that their North-East gig should be a night to remember.

“If the audience is quiet at the start of a show, generally, they are not by the end,” says Parton. “If the audience is going to be moved, then they have to feel like the band gives a toss. There can be a ‘If you are not going to get into it, then I am not’, kind of attitude, so we try and sweep them along with us.”

* The Go! Team, The Cluny, Newcastle, Sunday