NYLON Magazine - September 2007 - (Page 148) SMELLS LIKE TEAM SPIRIT “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” says Ninja, the MC and lead singer with U.K. collective the Go! Team, who is hunkered down on a couch in the band’s dressing room before a big London show. “I just turn up and try not to ask too many questions because it might make me anxious if I know too much.” And after she gives the run-down on the Go! Team’s multi-continentspanning week leading up to this interview, it’s pretty clear as to why she might be on autopilot. “I need a day or two just to sleep,” she concludes with a laugh. The Go Team! are a knot of contradictions. Their 2005 debut record Thunder, Lightning, Strike was almost singlehandedly crafted by musical mastermind and group leader Ian Parton, who painstakingly stitched it together from samples. Much of the new follow up Proof Of Youth was similarly cobbled together, but there was a little more of a team effort going on. Parton still wrote the songs, but the band was called in to record a few more live parts. “If I threw it out in a jam session it wouldn’t sound like the Go! Team,” he says. “It is born out of the bands I’ve always loved—Sonic Youth, Public Enemy, girl groups.” But becoming a Phil Spector-like Svengali is not something Parton relishes. “Spector’s a super producer, but he’s a psychopath,” he laughs. So the rest of the band don’t have to quake in fear of being fired at Parton’s whim? Ninja grins in response: “We’re not puppets playing his music. I write my own lyrics and I do my own stuff. My interest in the Go! Team is that I get to rap. I wouldn’t be in the band if there wasn’t a hip-hop influence. I don’t care about the rock world. I don’t know any rock groups, and I don’t want to.” Definitely not so easily categorized, the Go! Team’s sound is a sonic bolt of star-spangled nostalgia from the sepia-toned ’70s, with peprally rapping and jump rope rhymes set to the merry accompaniment of what sounds like after-school band practice, with hectic beats and heavy guitar squalls thrown in for good measure. “I can’t claim the music is inspired by my childhood,” admits Parton, “but maybe by some Brooklyn kid’s childhood.” He adds, “When I was a kid, I would try and learn the Degrassi Jr. High theme tune on the piano. But then I was also into the Shangri-Las and teenage melodramas.” The Go! Team’s manic music is a mash-up of just about every genre in the book. And as everyone knows, it’s fun to play where there are no rules. By Malcolm Mackenzie. Photographed by Erin Barry That background was readily apparent on Thunder, Lightning, Strike, but with Proof of Youth, the Go! Team have gone a bit further into uncharted territory. “I wanted it to be more kicking,” Parton says. “That was the goal, really, to be a bit more aggro.” To achieve this aggressive sound Parton called in the services of Public Enemy number one, Chuck D., on a track called “Flashlight Fight.” “When he comes in on the record it’s like ‘Whoa!’” Parton exclaims. “It’s the first male vocal we’ve ever had, pretty much. But you’ve gotta make an exception for Chuck, don’t you?” “It’s a big deal” agrees Ninja, “because Public Enemy were pioneers. Hip-hop has changed, but hopefully one day it will go back to what it was supposed to be about, which is self-expression and black people using music as their voice in society.” Just a few minutes later, Ninja, the small girl with big ponytails and knee high socks, heads out on stage with the rest of the gang, and uses not only her voice but her entire body to dish out a frantic, instrument-swapping, blood-pumping performance. You can understand why she might want a little rest, but for now, the Go! Team can’t be stopped.
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