Cold Cuts

"The goal is to make music that makes people hop as much as it hops genres," states Ian Parton, founder and primary songwriter of Brighton-based sextet the Go! Team.

Note the exclamation point in the group's name, because Parton's poly-cultural troupe is all about the forceful punctuation. The male/female outfit -- a "social experiment" that, in addition to guitarists Parton and Sam Dook, includes a German girl and a Japanese girl (both drummers) along with a South London female MC -- punctuates Thunder, Lightning, Strike (which is now available on import) with flourishes attractive to fans of cheeky tone-twisters such as Cornelius and Sonic Youth. Parton name-drops northern soul, Sesame Street, and producer Steve Albini's sneering Shellac as influences, and references Bollywood, old-school electro, and pianist Vince Guaraldi. Chanting samples nicked from charity boot-sale records and old VHS tapes have been lovingly paired with tinny and tenacious guitars, brassy hooks, and scratchy funk jabs.

The resulting mélange is bobbing and bristly, as if Tom Selleck's mustache became sentient and started a theme-song cover band that played the themes from Magnum, P.I., assorted Peanuts cartoons, and The Brady Bunch Hour, but employed only thirteen-year-old New York City jump-rope practitioners as musicians.

Live, the Go! Team translates its cut-and-paste pastiche into something fiercer. "Experimentation with live bands is usually chin-stroking postrock, but I want us to combine dance music technology with the thrash of a live band," reveals Parton. "I'd never be happy being just a four-blokes-with-guitar band. We want to present equal parts visual and musical intensity."