The Go! Team Interview

When your frontwoman possesses the moniker Ninja, you know the band means business. Shrinking violets The Go! Team are not. After a four-year studio hiatus following 2007's well-received sophomore offering, Proof Of Youth, the Brighton sextet return to the spotlight this month, with their third album, 'Rolling Blackouts'.

Ahead of their first UK tour in aeons - including a rare as hen's teeth London date at Heaven - Gigwise caught up with music nut and brains behind the operation Ian Parton to find out how the old school hip-hop, double dutch and garage rock melding outfit have moved on.

It's been a long time since you toured, are you looking forward to it?

Yeah definitely. It's a bit of foray into the unknown with the new material, we've been doing stuff all over the world and purposely avoiding the UK for a while, so we're really looking forward to getting back into it.

New LP, Rolling Blackouts is out on Jan 31 - pleased with how its turned out?

Yeah, it was a long process putting it together. It's a lot more songy I think, people might not agree with me, but I think so. People assume we're sample addicts, but we've always kind of applied songwriting to samples - which isn't as easy at it might appear. It was a really long process, I had 10 hours of ideas and listened to thousands of records, most of which were rubbish! You need lots of patience, I'm kind of an obsessive person who is perpetutally in search of the perfect song. I'm interested in catchiness and melody and like to write curvy, unexpected melodies. I'm always amazed by how poor some of the melodies and choruses are in pop music - like 'is that really your chorus??'.

Buy Nothing features the vocals of Beth from Best Coast, how did that come about?

The song came first, then I thought about what voice would suit it and as it had a really west coast feel to it I began searching for a vocalist. I found Beth on MySpace before Crazy For You blew up in December 2009 I think it was, I'm really pleased with the results.

I read you're a massive South Youth fan - did you get to see their NYE show in London?

I didn't, I saw them in Manchester the night before though it was a cool show - I love those guys!

You got to support them a few years ago too didn't you, that must have been a dream come true?

Yeah it was, we did three shows with them. One in Detroit was ridiculous, it was us, Flaming Lips and Sonic Youth! I've got a picture of that billing for that framed at home. The were great guys, Lee Ranaldo was complimentary about us which was great.

I saw you guys in Manchester on tour to promote the last record and I was blown away by the energy you give off - where did you meet Ninja?

Yeah, her commitment to the show is ridiculous, she treats every show like a marathon and never phones in a performance. She popped a knee at one gig! I put up a message on a message board saying 'old skool female rapper wanted' and she replied 'old skool female rapper found' with loads of exclamation marks! I sent her a demo and she liked it, but didn't quite know what to make of it. She was a student and wanted to play in Sweden and after that we took it one gig at a time - all these years later, he we still are.

You do quite a lot of remix work, any artists out there now you'd like to get your hands on?

I'm not sure really, I'd like to get my hands of some rubbish pop music like Rhianna and really f*ck it up I think! Or something like Crazy In Love by Beyonce, which is one of the best pop songs of all time.

Brighton has always had such a healthy music scene, any acts lately caught your eye/ear?

There isn't really a scene as such just lots of young, creative people which the city seems to attract. It's quite disjointed, we're not connected in any way to British Sea Power, Blood Red Shoes or The Maccabees. It's a magnet for youngsters. We're not totally Brighton, Ninja and Kaori live in London, Ninja actually hates Brighton - she thinks it's full of layabouts! It's good to be outside that London scene though, but be close to it too - I don't get up there often as I have a kid now.

What's next?

I'm just looking forward to taking this record around the UK, then the States and and then the festivals I guess.

Do you like playing festivals?

They're good fun, but I know it's old indie cliche - I can't stand the distance between the band and the crowd, I prefer the sweaty little venues where you get more a connection. When we play festivals we try and launch a war and blow away those on before and after you and try and get those buying a hotdog or whatever to get involved.