The Go! Team

The Go! Team is a Brighton, United Kingdom-based group active since 2000. It begins as a solo project for Ian Parton, who is from Wales and was previously involved in Dig The Slowness, before developing into a six-piece band with two drummers. Its lineup includes Ian Parton, Ninja, Chi Fukami Taylor, Kaori Tsuchida, Sam Dook and Silke Stiedinger, with Silke Steidinger also listed among the members. The group is split evenly by gender and has a female front person in Ninja.

Style and approach

The Go! Team’s music combines indie rock, indie pop, alternative, dance, electronic, hip hop and sample-based production. Its songs mix action theme motifs, cheerleader chants, noise pop guitars, early hip-hop, garage rock, funk, Bollywood soundtracks, double Dutch chants and distorted guitars. In the studio, the band often builds tracks largely from samples, while live performances rely mostly on live instruments. Lead vocals are usually handled by Ninja, with sampled and guest voices also appearing on record.

Releases and recognition

The band’s first release is the Get It Together EP in 2000, issued on Leicester-based Pickled Egg Records. After a gap caused by legal problems, it releases the Junior Kickstart EP in 2003. Its debut album, Thunder, Lightning, Strike, appears on Memphis Industries in 2004 and gains widespread critical acclaim. The album is nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 2005 and is later issued in a revised “legal” version with uncleared samples removed. The co-production and mixing are handled by Ian Parton’s brother Gareth Parton at The Fortress Studios and Bluestone in London. The revised album is reissued with two bonus tracks in the UK and the US the following year, and it reaches number 48 on the UK Albums Chart in February 2006.

Later albums

The Go! Team’s album discography includes Proof of Youth, Rolling Blackouts, The Scene Between, SEMICIRCLE, Get Up Sequences Part One and Get Up Sequences Part Two.

Other uses and collaborations

Several of the group’s songs are used in advertising and games. “Bottle Rocket” is used in an RTÉ Sport campaign on RTÉ One and RTÉ Two, “Huddle Formation” is used in a Honda Civic advertising campaign, “We Just Won’t Be Defeated” appears in Target commercials, and “Get It Together” is the title song for the official soundtrack to LittleBigPlanet on PlayStation 3.