One Thursday morning in October 2019, The Go! Team’s Ian Parton woke to find his world forever changed. “Something was different – I couldn’t work out what it was. Then I realised all the bass had gone from my ear. I’m a sucker for cranking up the volume and I’d never worn earplugs. I thought, ‘oh f***, it’s finally caught up with me.’”
He was right to be worried – but not because he’d been caning it on the decks for years. Parton had developed Meniere’s disease, a rare inner-ear condition that causes dizziness and, in extreme cases, hearing loss. When he received the diagnosis his blood ran cold.
“It can really affect you,” says the producer and DJ renowned for his nostalgia-infused mash-ups of disco, punk, funk and Bollywood soundtracks. “You can have vertigo attacks. Sometimes you can’t stand up. It’s a balance thing. There’s no cure for it.”
The good news is that, for now, he’s getting by. “It’s manageable for me. At the moment it hasn’t severely impacted on my life. The challenge is to not let it do so – to carry on.”
Listening to The Go! Team is like stumbling upon a secret party where the music is euphoric, the atmosphere ecstatic – but where there is just the tiniest hint of melancholy streaking the horizon. That’s especially true of their wonderful sixth LP, Get Up Sequences Part One, in which positive vibrations mingle with a deep ennui.
I had a bit of a PTSD thing going after I was diagnosed. My relationship with the album changed a bit. Music became a life-raft
That sadness has long been a component of Parton’s songwriting. However, given recent setbacks, it’s no surprise that on the new record the angst should be especially dialled up.
“I’ve always been quite fortunate in that I haven’t had many bad things happen to me. I’ve been jammy,” he says. “And then I had this triple whammy.”
It was one blow after another. First came Covid. Then his father died. And all the while he was struggling to adjust to life with Meniere’s disease. “I had a bit of a PTSD thing going after I was diagnosed,” he says. “My relationship with the album changed a bit. Music became a life-raft.”
The Go! Team have since the start been a group to cling to in troubled times. A natural born crate-digger, Parton blends old samples with original hooks and lyrics when writing the band’s songs. One of the most beloved examples is their uplifting 2004 hit Ladyflash – a perfect synergy of the Beastie Boys and the Beach Boys, topped off with fervent vocals by frontwoman Ninja, aka Nkechi Ka Egenamba.
But Get Up Sequences Part One stands apart in their catalogue insofar as it has unfolded in the shadow of illness, death and a global health emergency. And though written before Covid, many of the lyrics feel pitched to the great pause we’ve all just lived though.
Under the skin
Some of the songs truly get under the skin. On World Remember Me Now, Ninja negotiates a fever dream where every day feels like a faded replica of the one immediately preceding it. Let the Seasons Work, meanwhile, is a reminder all things will pass, including lockdowns and pandemics. The message is that, no matter how dark the night, we should never give up hope. Eventually the sun will rise again.
“It’s about the cyclical nature of life,” Parton explains. “If you hang around long enough it will get better. A lot of the songs were written before the pandemic and before the hearing loss. But it became eerie how they foretold everything. With World Remember Me now – that phrase can be pretty appropriate to the last year. Everyone feels a bit forgotten.”
One of the driving forces was to burst out against the NME brigade – all those guitars and people thinking they were cool
His dad’s death carries an extra layer of poignancy in view of the fact Parton’s career had started in the kitchen of the family home in Wales. Thunder, Lightning, Strike, The Go! Team’s Mercury-nominated 2004 debut, was assembled there using “six microphones and a bunch of dodgy vinyl” (Parton later had to re-record it after issues arose over the use of uncleared samples).
There was a grand unifying concept behind The Go! Team from the start. Relocating to Brighton, Parton wanted the project to be the anthesis of the poseur-driven indie rock all the rage in the early 2000s. This was the heyday of “landfill indie” and outfits such as Razorlight, The Libertines and Kaiser Chiefs. Some, though certainly not all, were living out an antiquated and machismo-mediated vision of rock’n’roll, one that owed more to the 1970s than to the 21st century. The Go! Team set out to be the precise opposite.
“One of the driving forces was to burst out against the NME brigade – all those guitars and people thinking they were cool,” says Parton. “We wanted to redefine what being cool meant in a band. And how you could do it differently – in a way that was both masculine and feminine.”
Fusty boundaries
They were keen, too, to punch through the fusty boundaries of “alternative” rock.
“We wanted to do it in a way that recognised there were more instruments than guitars, even though I love guitars. Steel drums, flutes, banjos – stuff like that. I wanted us to be male and female, to come from different backgrounds. At the time genre-hopping wasn’t a thing. It’s much more common now. That’s how you get Miley Cyrus headlining a festival which used to be indie. You can be into anything nowadays.”
Does he subscribe to the idea, then, that landfill indie was a black mark against British rock? It’s fashionable today to lament cheeky chancers such as The Pigeon Detectives and The Young Knives as an unintentionally hilarious low-point for guitar music. “There were a few good songs around,” he says. “Some undeniably great indie pop songs. It’s not what I was particularly interested in. I like the fact we were a separate thing.”
The Go! Team weren’t the only musicians attempting to rethink what it was to be an alternative band. They are, however, the only ones who have proved to be in it for the long haul. “You had Klaxons and CSS, who have fallen by the wayside. We’re still here and, for my money, as good as ever. I never think, ‘oh everything has been done – The Go! Team has reached its limit.’ I still feel overwhelmed by potential and drowning in ideas.”
One thing that does gnaw at him slightly is the cliche that The Go! Team are just about samples and beats, and that he is a glorified collage artist.
“People have understated the songwriting,” he says. “They assume I grab some samples and stick a siren underneath. It’s not that case at all. I spend years hoarding these little hooks that I’ve written. It’s much more of a songwriter thing than people might realise. It’s the same with the notion we’re a party band. Party band? I don’t know. I’ve always cringed slightly. I’m more interested in the grey area.
“Happy – it’s such a two-dimensional word. I like the tension [between happiness and sadness].”
Parton certainly sounds chipper today. And with some justification. The pandemic may finally, finally be winding down. And though Meniere’s disease is incurable he is, for the moment, managing the condition. He’s also discovered he’s not alone.
“Huey Lewis has it, it turns out. And so does Jessie J.” He pauses and laughs. “Maybe we should start a supergroup.”
Get Up Sequences Part One is released Friday July 2
