Sauce

When The Go Team debuted on the Big Day Out circuit a couple of years ago, band ringleader, Ian Parton, viewed the festival - as have many visiting musicians - as an extended vacation… We called it the Big Day Off because we’d have three days off then a gig then three days off,” laughs Parton, resting up at his English home in Brighton in preparation for a UK tour.

The past few weeks has seen the sample-driven six-piece slightly busier, promoting their recently released second album Proof Of Life with appearances at Spanish festivals and a special recording for the BBC’s Radio One program. Dates in China have also been on their collective calendar.
“Live music doesn’t really exist in China yet, it’s a real novelty,” says Parton who handles drums, guitar and harmonica duties. “There’s only one venue where we played in Shanghai, it’s a nightclub, not really a venue, but it went stupidly well! People were stage-diving and getting on each other’s shoulders.”

I suppose the Beastie Boys introduced the concept of sampling in hip hop to a mass audience… where did it all start for you?
“Yeah, that was the kind of golden era of sampling, where the rules were still pretty loose. Public Enemy did that as well, they had songs that hold a bunch of ideas, not just one which is what a lot of hip hop is these days, with dodgy singing over the chorus. I like songs with three choruses in them, things that hold your attention by taking three left turns. I’m also a great believer in melody and catchiness so it’s not just a wank-off self-indulgent thing. It’s a personal combination of all my favourite things and I didn’t want to lose sight of that.”

As The Go Team’s leader, did you give up a certain amount of control this time, on Proof Of Youth?
“The songs are pretty much locked down in terms of melody and structure and stuff like that. And everyone’s better on their instruments than I am so I’d be stupid not to harness everyone’s skills … But I guess I’m the one with the obsession with sampling, who looks on eBay and through old documentaries and hundreds of old records for that three second sample and things. I’ve got songs at home that have evolved from various sources, you know, melodies I’ve sung into my phone or samples from four-track tapes I have scattered around. So things evolve and we go into a space in Brighton where half the band live and we go in there every day – no producer, just us lot. I think the new album has moved on a fair amount from the first record, it sounds more live.”

So what is it about sampling that appeals?
“I always approached samples as a technology where I can cut n’ paste and juxtapose things, you know, contrasts - all my favourite things. I’ve always been interested in how wildly different things can work together in some way, that there is some common ground between a soaring violin and a freak-out noisy guitar thing and trumpets in a blaxploitation film and gang double Dutch vocals. I’m interested in the overlaps between sounds.”

You must have messed around a lot with a four-track when you were younger?
“Oh yeah, I had an Amstrad four-track, that was super crap and real home entertainment bollocks but I’m kind of superstitious about getting rid of it. I like that kind of stuff. I even had an old karaoke machine which I suppose was like a primitive four-track because you’d make a tape then record over it yourself and then add stuff onto it. I’ve used a mid-80s Atari computer too which does the job, really basic but quite stable and very user friendly. I did my very first demos on that, I used it to trigger the samples. And an Akai sampler which I used on Thunder, Lightning, Strike.”

What did a Mercury Music Prize nomination in 2005 for that album mean to you?
“Obviously amazing, you know. We were doing pretty well before that but it kind of put us on the map for a few people. For me, it felt like a victory for the idea of lo-fi and the idea of home-made recordings because it was an album made in the kitchen using about five shitty microphones! And we were going to head-to-head with major label albums.”

Proof Of Youth is out through Shock. The Go Team play the Falls Festival later this year.