With a powerhouse touring lineup firmly in place The Go! Team began to grow in popularity in the UK and abroad, their high-octane live shows contributing heavily to their underground popularity. In 2007 The Go! Team upped the ante with the release of their sophomore album
Proof of Youth, which dropped on Memphis Industries in the United Kingdom and
Sub Pop (
The Postal Service,
The Shins) in the United States. Featuring contributions by
Solex and
Marina Ribatski (formerly of
Bonde do Role),
Proof of Youth rose to #21 in the UK and #142 in the USA - not bad considering the band’s small backing labels and relative obscurity.
Proof of Youth has so far spawned two singles,
"Grip Like a Vice" and
"Milk Crisis".
From Lastfm:The Go! Team are 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.
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 Parton, whose debut release was the "Get It Together EP", released in 2000 by Brighton-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.
Their song "Bottle Rocket" was used as the theme on an advertising campaign for RTÉ Sport in 2005 on the Irish TV channels RTÉ One and RTÉ Two. Another of their songs, "Huddle Formation" is currently being used in an advertising campaign for the Honda Civic, "We Just Won't Be Defeated" is also being used in current Target commercials, and "Get It Together" is the title song of the official soundtrack for LittleBigPlanet which is a PlayStation 3 game.
www.thegoteam.co.uk
The Go! Team is not to be confused with Calvin Johnson's (Beat Happening, co-founder of K Records) and Tobi Vail's (Bikini Kill, Spider and the webs) 1980's band, The Go Team. For information on The Go Team, see the Wikipedia entry. Last.fm currently redirects scrobbled tracks for The Go Team to this page (assuming that users omit the exclamation point by accident).
From Wikipedia:The Go! Team are an English, Brighton-based sextet. With founder Ian Parton, they have pushed the boundaries of indie rock and garage rock in a unique style, incorporating two drum kits and an imitative mixture of 1970s car chase themes, double dutch chants, old hip hop and loud guitars similar to the style of Sonic Youth. Their songs are a mix of live instrumentation and samples from various sources. The band's recorded material is seen as somewhat a separate entity to their live performances. Studio versions of songs may have more live instrumentation which is played on tape behind the stage performances of the six members. While live vocals are handled mostly by Ninja, with Tsuchida and Fukami-Taylor also singing some solos, vocals on record are a mixture of random sampled voices, MCs sampled from old school hip hop, guest singers/rappers and actual band members.