Staff Reviews

The Go! Team - Semicircle

Review by Conrad Duncan

Semicircle is not an album that warrants close inspection, nor does it seem to ask to be one»

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The Go! Team have always been cheerleaders for a better world – an outpouring of collective joy in the face of small-mindedness and dismal careerism. They rejoice in the unifying urges and the chance encounters between cultures that lead to something new. They’re a band who still have faith in the power of music to make things better. Now more than ever, we need The Go! Team. The brainchild of Ian Brighton-based melody obsessive Ian Parton, The Go! Team’s fifth album Semicircle began with an idea; In his head was the image of a school marching band gone rogue, chucking away their sheet music to blast out Northern soul stompers or Japanese indie-pop swooners or old-school hip-hop jams. With the vital input of current live players Simone Odaranile (drums) and Angela ‘Maki’ Won-Yin Mak (vocals), plus original Team members Sam Dook (guitar) and Ninja (irrepressible rapping), not to mention Annelotte de Graaf AKA Amber Arcades, and Julie Margat AKA Lispector, topped off by an inspiring trip to Detroit where he hooked up with The Detroit Youth Choir Semicircle took shape across the first half of 2017. Stacking up sousaphones, glockenspiels and steel drums, breakbeats and Semicircle is a kaleidoscopic cacophony, almost as if the sound itself is bent and refracted in the metallic curves of a trumpet, comforting and intoxicating at the same time. One moment we hear the kids from Detroit channelling Rescue Me’ and ‘SOS’ on Mayday, a morse-code-inspired soul belter about a love emergency, then there’s Ninja unleashing a volley of verbal stingers on She Got Guns or the lo-fi R&B vocal for Chain Link Fence; Semicircle brings together unlikely elements to create a euphoric, exhilarating experience.
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