by kevin diamond
QC was fortunate to get some time with Go! Team founder Ian Parton. The discussion ranged from the direction of their third album, the legality of music sampling, The Velvet Underground, and much much more. Get it together and check this out.
GET IT TOGETHER BY THE GO! TEAM:
QC: Your first album, Thunder, Lightening, Strike, was recorded by yourself in your parents kitchen. When it came time to tour for the album, you obviously had to illicit help. How did you choose who would become a part of what had been, at that point, something you did on your own? And how did these new band members’ personalities mesh, with each other, with your own personality, and with the very specific personality of that first album?
GO!: Well there were no auditions or anything and I didn’t have time to try out loads of people – it was a case of, if you like it and you wanna do it you’re in. i agreed to do the first Go! Team show without a band to play it, so i had to get a band within weeks and start practicing. 4 years later we’re still doing it which is pretty amazing because we’re quite different from each other in every possible way – we’re pretty mellow and there are no egos – thats how we managed it.
QC: When it came time to record the second album, Proof of Youth, you included the full band in the process. The response to the second LP was almost universally positive, and the energy and enthusiasm of the full-band sound seemed to be a big reason why you were able to overcome the dreaded sophomore slump. Now that you’re about to start recording LP3, are you planning to approach anything differently? Or do you think you’ve found the winning formula?
GO!: I am conscious of moving forward but I’m not gonna do an acoustic album just so critics can say “haven’t the go team moved on?” Everyone is hardwired to be turned on by certain things, it’s what makes you tick. at the same time there are still a million things to try. I’d like to use scratching in a non hip hop way . I think its an under explored sound.
QC: What’s the overall direction of the 3rd LP going to be? Are songs written already? Do you have Samples picked out that you know you want to use? Genres you want to experiment with that you haven’t yet? Or does the album get written as it’s recorded?
GO!: I hoard ideas like a squirrel. I scribble on records, i sing into my phone, i hunt stuff down. So that’s where I’m up to at the mo. All i know is that i want the next stuff to be more cut-n-paste and more schizo like you’re flipping channels on a radio. I’m currently stockpiling old reel to reel tape machines and i want to record to tape more. there’s definitely no plan to reach a wider audience by cleaning up the sound.
QC: Do you have different goals when you’re working on an album then you do when you’re performing live?
GO!: I don’t actually think about the live side of it. i don’t think you can write from the crowd backwards. I started doing music to please myself and to do stuff i wished other people would do and that’s the most healthy way to do music i think.
QC: I think anyone with working ears can tell that The Go! Team sound is pretty unique, but do you consider the band an anomaly? Are there any other bands, contemporary or in the past, that you think are doing somewhat of the same thing? Who do you consider to be your fore bearers?
GO!: I wouldn’t claim to be in the same league as The Velvet Underground but I always loved the way they would veer from white noise drone to cute little xylophone songs, They are pretty inspiring for me in that way. I haven’t found anyone who has exactly the same goals as us at the moment. I mean people say Black Kids sound like us but to me they sound really clean and 80’s. It’s not my scene. Boards of Canada are an inspiration to me because they deal with feelings that are out of reach.
QC: According to your website, you’ve got a tour film coming out soon. What’s the word on that? What kind of shows were documented? Is there behind-the-scenes footage, or is it mostly performance? Who was the director?
GO!: That’s been vetoed. Our tour manager filmed stuff on his phone for a few years but no one in the band wants it to be seen. It probably has shots of us doing crack or something.
QC: You pretty famously had to re-create some tracks on your first album with some different samples, as some of the original samples weren’t clear-able. I’m curious about your opinions on sampling, Fair Use and the Creative Commons movement, if you’ve been following that at all? There’s a huge Internet-based contingent of geeks, nerds, artists, and musicians who are fighting the introduction of laws in places like Canada that would make much of the way you produce your music illegal, if you were operating there. How do you feel about sampling and copyright law?
GO!: I’m willing to pay whoever, whatever if it means getting the song right. Sampling can be a legitimate art form where you make something genuinely fresh or it can be a complete rip off and lazy – a la Kanye West. Law can’t recognize the difference. if you think its obscure and changed enough you might as well fudge it.
QC: I’m interested in how your tastes run in the world of visual art? The way you approach music is similar to how a collage artist would approach a piece of work. Do you enjoy visual collage? Is there a specific visual artist in any genre that inspires you musically?
GO!: Yeah collage is a big influence. I make super 8 films everywhere we go and I’ve always thought they are a bit like a visual version of a Go! Team song: colorful grainy, lo-fi flash frames of random stuff
QC: I read on your website you guys have submitted a track for a Survival International charity album. What’s the charity about? What’s the track?
GO!: Theres a show on the BBC here in England called Tribe where a bloke lives with a tribe for a month. They’re making a charity record where musicians use samples of field recordings of the tribes and turn ‘em into songs. We were asked and used a little melody sung by a lady in the Babongo tribe for a song called “templates from home” – It’s a pretty surreal idea to collaborate with someone I’ve never met and who has such a different life to me.
QC: Finally, and this is kind of silly, but there is a local TV station here in New York, NYCTV, with a show called New York Noise. They have a segment they call Patty Pitchfork, where a sweet middle-aged lady reads sections of Pitchfork Record reviews. One of the episodes had her reading a review of Proof of Youth. She had an awfully hard time pronouncing your name, what’s with the exclamation point sitting there smack dab in the middle. Do you ever regret putting that guy there? Whats the difference between “The Go! Team” and “The Go Team” if any?
GO!: Yeah we’ve been on New York Noise. the exclamation mark for me is like a cymbal crash – Psssshhh!
Quiet Color 2008
