Interview: Ian Parton, Go! Team founder

Published on Tuesday 1 February 2011 11:32

THE Go! Team's founder Ian Parton could sense something was on the moment he put the finishing touches to 2004 debut album Thunder, Lightning Strike in his parents' kitchen.

But he had no clue just how much of an impact the home recording would make.

"It started off as a hobby and I didn't have any idea of how people would react," he says, speaking ahead of the Brighton-based sextet's visit to Liquid Room tomorrow.

"All I remember is listening to Thunder, Lightning, Strike and thinking, 'I can't think of anyone else that sounds like this'."

A mash-up of Eighties TV themes, cut 'n' paste hip-hop and the odd cheerleader chant, the album was released to widespread acclaim, going on to earn The Go! Team a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize.

Looking back, Paton says the Mercury nomination was "just bizarre", and insists that he didn't buy in to all the press attention.

"We might have been hyped too quickly - we were playing sold-out shows in Manhattan when we weren't actually very good," he says.

Three years since the release of second album Proof Of Youth, The Go! Team return this month with third offering Rolling Blackouts, a record that's different to its predecessors for a variety of reasons.

"It's more sing-y, more melodic, more panoramic, has more bass, it's more eclectic, plus it features a live teenage community brass band," says Parton.

"This album's definitely driven more by songwriting and features more singing, rather than the double-Dutch chants people know us for.

"I wanted to make strange little pop songs - I've always been really into catchiness and melody because it's the hardest thing to do - but not to have a hit or get into the charts. So on this record I was really putting melody first and letting it run the show.

"When you've got something you think is watertight, that's when you can start f****** it up," he adds.

Rolling Blackouts saw Parton and his band (the other members being MC Ninja, Kaori Tsuchida, Jamie Bell, Sam Dook and Chi Fukami Taylor) team up with a wide range of artists, including Deerhoof's Satomi and Best Coast singer Bethany Cosentino.

"I'd write a song and then think about the kind of voice that would suit the song, so it was back-to-front really," explains Parton. "I had one song called Secretary Song which made me think of a 60s office in Tokyo and secretaries all typing in time, hating their jobs, and it had a melody in the chorus which reminded me a little of Deerhoof. Because we kind of know Satomi, it was easy for us to ask her and I knew it would work perfectly.

"With Bethany from Best Coast I had a song called Buy Nothing Day that had a Californian girl group kind of feel - I discovered Best Coast on MySpace and loved her voice. This was about December 2009, so before all the Best Coast hype... maybe I should be an A&R man."

It's been a few years since The Go! Team have gigged in this country, but Parton insists they are in good shape ahead of their live return. "We never really felt as though we'd gone away," he says. "We were playing endless shows around the world - in the Ukraine and Singapore, over to Russia and China, all sorts of ridiculous places - so we haven't played in the UK deliberately for a while.

"It doesn't feel as though we're rusty or anything, and we're probably tighter as a band than ever before," he adds.

The Go! Team, Liquid Room, Victoria Street, tomorrow, 7pm, 14, 0131-225 2564

The Phoenix Foundation

By Carla Gray

Every so often a band comes along out of nowhere and captivates your imagination until you're unable to get its songs out of your head.

This year that band may well be The Phoenix Foundation, an indie-rock outfit from New Zealand whose latest album Buffalo has already won high praise from UK reviewers who have described its dreamy, psychedelic sound as similar to Fleet Foxes and Stone Roses.

The past few years have been busy for the group, who tried their hand at writing the film score for 2007 NZ indie comedy Eagle vs Shark, starring their friend Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords fame, while last year they were named Best Group at the New Zealand Music Awards.

Tomorrow the band perform their first show in Edinburgh, supporting Brighton-based sextet the Go! Team at the Liquid Room.

The city is already familiar to band member Conrad Wedde who was part of the successful Krishnan's Dairy, a one-man play for which Wedde produced the sound, which won a Fringe First Award in 1999.

Luke Buda, co-frontman says, "We're able to put on pretty good live shows these days and I'm certain audiences will like it if they get a chance to hear it."