The Go! Team - Flash Lady

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The Go! Team have a secret weapon. Hidden among the several hundred million samples making up Thunder, Lightning, Strike – the London/Brighton five-piece’s cheerfully overwhelming cut’n’paste car-crash pop album – are some actual vocals courtesy of a girl calling herself Ninja. When STARSANDHEROES arrives at London’s 100 Club to talk to The Go! Team, the band are busy soundchecking 2004’s raucous horns’n’rifftastic debut single "Junior Kickstart"; and sure enough, there’s Ninja, rapping centre-stage and no doubt imagining the crowds which await them later in the evening. The gig sold out weeks ago, but the band – still only about a year old – take this fact in good stead.

"Have you heard of the Accelerator Festival in Sweden? It’s a really hot festival – our first ever gig was there, in front of 900 people or something stupid," explains Go! Team mastermind Ian P. Soundcheck over, we’re now sitting with Ian and Ninja in the elongated cupboard which serves as the venue dressing room. This gig is part of the band’s current UK tour, rendered strangely sporadic in structure due to all six Team members holding down full-time jobs.

It’s forgivable to assume that transferring The Go! Team’s remarkable, chaotic patchwork pop – think The Avalanches and Saint Etienne on a fairground Waltzer, with Andy Weatherall and Roxanne Shanté at the controls, and you’re half-way there – from album to stage would be nigh-on impossible. After all, the aforementioned Avalanches’ live show sees the Aussies not even bothering to try recreating their recorded output and disappearing off to fresh sonic pastures instead.

"I can’t really see any reason why you should play a different song to the one you’ve recorded. Y’know, it is different from the record – it’s a lot noisier and even more chaotic," Ian explains as Ninja cuts in: "And there’s vocals as well, that people won’t have heard. There’s something to watch all around, whether it’s people swapping instruments, the vocalists, the whole vibe of six people onstage – hopefully the audience can feel a bit more involved."

And how. When The Go! Team take the stage later in the evening, London’s indie trendy-trousers cognoscenti, with their hair just-so, aren’t exactly sure what they’re watching. Is this really a hip-hop show? Is dancing really involved? Has Ninja really divided the room in half and persuaded 400 incredulous hipsters to engage in credibility-stretching call-and-response activity? Yes, on all counts. Never mind the "vocal-as-instrument" styles of the album: Ninja, almost demure in a buttoned-up cardie during our interview, suddenly morphs into Neneh Cherry for the download set, a motivational mistress of ceremonies and the perfect foil for Ian and the remaining Team’s courageous racket. Talk about a light under a bushel.

Ninja refutes the idea that The Go! Team’s backing tracks short-change the audience, arguing that "I don’t think you can make it more live unless you bring in an orchestra, and have some people at the back on saxophone, four more guys on trumpets, and make the stage five times as big…" The cash for such a full-blown spazzpop orchestra sadly isn’t quite in place yet, but the glint in Ian’s eye suggests that precisely that set-up is already running riot in his head – even if he is wincing at its financially ruinous and logistically nightmarish potential. Ninja is equally circumspect: "Can you imagine the soundcheck?"

"We’re kind of like the underdogs," she continues, when asked how she thinks The Go! Team are perceived, "If you saw a picture of us, you wouldn’t know what to expect." Ian gives some clue as to why they’re so unpredictable: "I’ve got 100 tapes worth of shit. But I have a compilation of the best bits of the shit." And in fact, even listening to riotous last single ‘Ladyflash’, or album highlights ‘Huddle Formation’ and ‘The Power Is On’, delectable confusion reigns: The Go! Team sound like the contents of Japanese ingenue Cornelius’s head clattering down a lift shaft and cackling all the way. A greater gift, one could hardly wish for.

Originally published in The Fly magazine, February 2005 issue.