Interview with BOTW: The Go! Team’s Ian Parton

As our BOTW merriment continues for yet another day, Tim Robins got in touch with The Go! Team’s main man Ian Parton via email on the cusp of the band’s first UK tour in almost 3 years. Can we get a rewind?

PN: Over the 7 years since the release of ‘Thunder, Lightning, Strike’- in many ways the most visceral and distorted offering from the band- has there been a distinct sonic trajectory which you have aimed for? Is there an ideal sound that you had in mind from the start which you are consistently working towards (perhaps causing the movement from one man project to band) or are the musical changes from album to album a bit more pragmatic?
Ian Parton: I think all along i’ve kinda subconsciously had this checklist of what a song should sound like – i want the songs to be catchy but hopefully not in an obvious way, there should be something strange about it, it should be groovy, ideally it would be a bit schizo and choppy, maybe simultaneously cheeky sounding and fucked up. I think the main difference with Rolling Blackouts is I wanted it to be more melodic and sing-y. In some ways its about trying to write a classically good pop song – I’ve always been obsessed with catchiness – but at the same time I want it to be too weird to be considered a pop song. they’re the hardest kinds of songs to write I think. I wanted the album to sound like the Go team but to have evolved in a way. The production is defo more spacious and rounded but still with a lo-fi edge – in fact I mastered the whole album onto a C-90 cassette at the very last stage.

PN: Which artists or bands would you most like to hear The Go! Team compared to? Are there any bands around at the moment who you would say are treading similar ground to you, either literally in terms of sound, or more abstractly, in terms of group ethos?
Ian: I still don’t really think anyone really sounds like us – lots of people mention Sleigh Bells cos they have shouty girl vox but they don’t really. There are plenty of bands that I’d like to hear us compared to (Boards of Canada, stereo total, blackmoth super rainbow) but again I don’t think they do. Its something I’m pleased about. Because we were so hyped in the mid 2000′s I think for some our sound will always be associated with that time but I think there’s acres of stuff still to try.

PN: On ‘Rolling Blackouts’ you have collaborated with Beth Cosentino of Best Coast and Satomi Matsuzaki from Deerhoof. What influenced your decision to choose these musicians out of the countless numbers you must have met over the years of touring?
Ian: I would write a song and then think about the kinda voice that would suit the song – so it was back-to-front really. i had one song called secretary song which made me think of a 60′s office in tokyo and secretaries all typing in time, hating their jobs and it had a melody in the chorus which reminded me a little of deerhoof. cos we kind of know satomi – they asked us to play a festival they were curating in belgium earlier this year – it was easy for us to ask her and I knew it would work perfectly. With bethany I had a song called Buy nothing day that had a californian girl group kinda a feel and i discovered Best coast on myspace and loved her voice -this was about december 2009 so before all the best coast hype. Maybe i should be an A + R man!

PN: Do you have any interesting stories from the studio sessions; were there any unexpected visitors in the studio, or any off the wall recording methods you used this time around for example?
Ian: We recorded with an African gospel choir in a church in Streatham for a song on the album called ‘The Running Range’, just turned up to one of their pracs with a computer and a bunch of mics. That was pretty cool. Another new thing we did on this record was to record with a 15 piece teenage brass band – i was quite keen that the band was made up of kids and not professional so the playing wasn’t perfect. To have this opportunity to record with a horn section opened up our options. Even though I’ve grown up in England I’ve always been into parades and that kind of marching band breakbeat sound. In fact I think I wanna reclaim brass. It can be a super tough sound, really mean like your going into battle.

PN: For a long while, certain music critics have been scathing about the widespread use of samples in popular music, maintaining that it is the culmination of a lack of ingenuity in music today. Has using samples ever made you feel uninventive?
Ian: I think theres 2 different kinds of sampling. sometimes it can be the laziest kind of music – when you wholesale lift a bit of music and put a beat under it like some mainstream hiphop does. For me this has more in common with being an entrepreneur – like seeing a gap in the market. I’m more interested in the kind of sampling where you grab snippets of obscure songs from wildly different places and decades and slam them next to each other – like a patchwork quilt. if samples are so recontextualized and have songwriting applied to them it can be a genuine artform.

PN: Do you have a favourite record shop in which to go rooting for records to sample?
Ian: There is an amazing shop in Brighton called the Record album which just specialises in film soundtracks. But I have to be honest the internet is an amazing resource for samplers – the amount of times i have spent a fortune on records and found nothing. when you download stuff you can motor to the good shit. and karmically I can justify it cos people steal our music all the time!

PN: You have toured extensively all over the world, and in 2007 you played 2 gigs in China, becoming one of the few bands from outside the country’s borders to play there. What has been the most interesting overseas tour for you?
Ian: It probably was China actually – just to witness how primitive the country was when it came to self expression. The concept of making art was really new, the idea of music journalism non existent, there were no venues to play in, no support bands to support us but they definitely rocked it. It felt like the 50′s or something – the birth of the teenager.

PN: When you play gigs in countries with customs so different to ours, do you have to adapt the live show to accommodate this? Or is it just a case of learning a few phrases in the local language, and playing the set as normal?
Ian: Ninjas pretty good at learning a few words from the country we’re in but yeah generally we get the same response i wherever we go. One thing i did notice in South korea was that the whole crowd copied whatever ninja did. it was pretty spooky. i was wondering if there was some cultural thing thats spilt over from those North Korean mass choreographed displays

PN: Do you think there is something about the mish-mash of different genres and sample sources incorporated in your music that contributes to your popularity all over the world?
Ian: Possibly – we defo don’t sound like a British band – I like to think we’re placeless or global. There are influences from all over the world in the music – bollywood, japanese pop, african funk and lots of american stuff from spaghetti westerns, old skool hip hop, west coast psych, 60′s girl groups, marching bands. I guess the go team music isn’t really about your own lived experience in the UK but things you’ve always loved – it could be a theme tune you liked, or a concert you went to, a documentary you saw or a film soundtrack you heard. Its like your life flashing before your eyes.

PN: Your gig on 8 February at Heaven is the first in UK for a while, with a tour to follow. Considering your comment about the new direction desired for the album, do you want your return to UK touring to show a transformed live band too. Has your time away been one where you tried to re-invent the live show as well as the recorded sound?
Ian: The 6 of us are the live band and we’ve been playing together for about 6 years now and who knows this may be our last year in the music biz – I think we’re still a tonne times more interesting than lots of indie bands so I’m not about to go overhauling anything. We can all play a few instruments so we’re pretty adaptable. We’re even playing a typewriter on stage this time around!

PN: Are the “homecoming” shows in Brighton always the ones you anticipate most during a UK tour?
Ian: I actually like the scottish dates better – the further north you get the rowdier the shows get i think