Preview: The Go! Team

April Fool’s Day seems an appropriate time for Brighton sextet The Go! Team to take to the stage in Barcelona.

For nearly a decade, they have been busily creating their own playful genre of music, instantly recognisable, undeniably infectious, child-like and genius in equal measure. Even the (very deliberate) inclusion of an exclamation mark in the name hints that energy and effervescence abound with this band.

It’s difficult to describe the sound of a group that couple indie guitar riffs with hip-hops beats, and layer cheesy cop show samples over soaring female vocals (courtesy of the band’s enigmatic singer known only as ‘Ninja’). But that’s what the Mercury Prize-nominated band do. As band founder and primary songwriter Ian Parton succinctly put it, the Go! Team specialise in “schizo music”. The result is an intoxicating and entertaining brand of music that has won them legions of fans not only in the UK, but also across the pond.

Debut album Thunder Lightning Strike was released in 2004; a family affair, it was recorded in Parton’s parents’ house, and mixed in the studio by his brother. The album was met with critical acclaim and commercial appeal, with a couple of tracks appearing in feature films and video game adverts. Widespread airplay on commercial radio soon followed, along with the aforementioned Mercury Prize nomination, and the rest, as they say, is history. Such was the album’s success, that the fledgling band found themselves at the centre of a record label bidding war in the US. (Columbia Records won, in case you were wondering).

The band have been touring for eight years now and this is presumably where Ninja perfected the art of turning the audience to putty in her hands. With high-profile gigs filling their resumé, the chance to see The Go! Team entertain at the comparatively small Razzmatazz is too good to pass up. Add to this the fact that Parton has hinted that new album Rolling Blackouts could be their last, and a ticket seems even more appealing. If the new album is, in fact, the band’s last, their relatively short career will be over as quickly as it began. But they can safely say it was fun while it lasted.