The Go! Team is a Brighton, United Kingdom-based six piece band (with two drummers) whose songs are a mixture of action theme songs, cheerleader chants, noise pop guitars and early hip-hop, with a hint of '70s funk. On record their songs are often pieced together largely from samples, although live the songs are performed mostly with live instruments. The band also combines indie rock and garage rock with a mixture of funk and Bollywood soundtracks, double Dutch chants, old school hip-hop and distorted guitars. While live vocals are handled mostly by lead vocalist Ninja, vocals on record also feature sampled and guest voices.
Founder Ian Parton, born in Wales, was previously involved in a band called Dig The Slowness. The band is split 50/50 by gender, with a female frontwoman Ninja, drummer (Chi Fukami Taylor), and multi-instrumentalist (Kaori Tsuchida, who replaced Steidinger in Autumn 2005).
Initially The Go! Team was ostensibly a solo project for documentary film director Ian Parton, whose debut release was the "Get It Together EP", released in 2000 by Leicester-based Pickled Egg Records. This received airplay from legendary DJ John Peel, but following this, legal wrangles meant that it would be another three years before their next release, the "Junior Kickstart" EP in 2003.
Their album "Thunder, Lightning, Strike" was released on the Memphis Industries label in September 2004, and has received widespread critical acclaim. In 2005 it was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, which coincided with the international release of a "legal" version of the album wherein samples which could not be cleared for use had to be removed. The album was co-produced and mixed by Ian's brother Gareth Parton at The Fortress Studios and Bluestone in London.
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