Product Description

Lodged somewhere in the previously undiscovered zone where Sonic Youth meets The Jackson 5, The Go! Team’s Mercury Music Prize nominated debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike kicked out the jams and then spread it on crumpets for tea. The Go! Team is a 50/50 boy multinational girl boy split: band leader Ian Parton on electric guitar, harmonica and drums, Sam Dook on electric guitar, banjo and drums Chi Fukami Taylor on drums, Silke Steidinger on drums, electric guitar, keys and melodica and Jamie Bell on bass, and dynamite mcing from pocket rocket Ninja. That’s right, there’s four drummers - eat your heart out Adam and the Ants.

On record The Go! Team are the Uncle Bulgaria’s of pop music, making good use of things everyday folk leave behind. Throwing together electro, 70’s cop show theme music, Bollywood soundtracks, cheerleading chants, old hip hop and noise guitar bands with a wide-eyed sense of possibility where everything crashes into everything else with a breathless, delighted, abandon. The Go! Team seem to be suffering from a collective brain-wrong that is gloriously, euphorically right. This special edition features two bonus tracks, "We Just Won't Be Defeated" and "Hold Yr Terror Close".

Track Listing

1. Panther Dash
2. Ladyflash
3. Feel good By Numbers
4. The Power Is On
5. Get It Together
6. Junior Kickstart
7. Air Raid Gtr
8. Bottle Rocket
9. Friendship Update
10. Huddle Formation
11. Everyone’s A V.I.P. To Someone

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40209 in Music
• Released on: 2004-09-13
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Go! Team’s piecemeal approach to music-making and their zest for block-rocking party sounds makes for an interesting sonic jumble. This re-release of Thunder, Lightning, Strike, their 2004 debut album, features several modifications from its original incarnation due to US licensing laws (a new verse from MC Ninja and two new tracks), but the changes are largely cosmetic: the album remains a belligerent brew of guitars, drums, old-school hip-hop, rock, harmonicas, banjos, flutes, rhymes and cheerleader-chants that illustrates the band’s famous anything-goes attitude. From the audacious assault of pop-tastic tracks like "Panther Dash" and the cartoonish rumble of "Feelgood By Numbers" to the jump-around anthem "Get It Together", the incessant – and sometimes overwhelming - joie-de-vivre of the document remains unrivalled by anything their contemporaries has produced in the meantime. --Paul Sullivan

CD Description
'Thunder Lightning Strike' is The Go Team's first full length release for Memphis Industries. The album combines a Wild-West theme with straight ahead dancefloor sensibilities. Includes the singles 'Lady Flash' and 'Junior Kickstart'.

Customer Reviews

Summer album of the year
Having only heard Bottle Rocket when i brought this album, I wasn't sure what to expect.

However, if you're looking for an album to get you going in the morning or cheer you up on a rainy day you woudl be hard pushed to find a better album than this for the job.

Ladyflash, Bottle Rocket, and The Power Is On are all cut and paste numbers in the Avalanche style. However, the music is more layered and joyfully hectic with a real sense of it being compiled live.

The album also flirts with acid jazz and more laid back electronica but it pretty much unclassifiable.

If you want something different and music that will excite you over and over again (i've now listened to the album everyday for the past week since i bought it) then you really should check this out.

Go, team!
The Go! Team might just have one of the catchiest albums of the year, "Thunder Lightning Strike." Definitely the catchiest of the summer. Despite the current wave of nu-Manchester or new wave bands that are popping up, this Brighton band dips into a different musical well.

Their unique sound is made up of sunshine funk, big beats, peculiar samples, adrenaline-pumping rock, TV theme songs and the occasional cheerleader. (Yes, cheerleader) It opens with a charged trashcan drum song, "Panther Dash," before slipping into a series of funky, blippy grooves.

Those sounds run through the entire album, alternating between hyperkinetic rock'n'roll and colorful electronic big beats. It's all jammed with harmonica, horn, what sounds like a sitar, and hip-hop flourishes. And whatever style it is, it's danceable from beginning to end, densely packed with fun beats and wild rhythms.

In fact, it's hard to find a part of "Thunder Lightning Strike" that isn't packed with at least two kinds of sound at once. In fact, it sounds like they gathered every single instrument they could get their hands on, dosed them with Red Bull and planted them in front of a bunch of 1970s TV shows. That retro sound isn't a gimmick, however -- even if you don't have nostalgia for that TV era, the sound is wildly entertaining.

Their hyperdrivin' guitars might sound repetitive, if they didn't have lots of samples and extra instrumentation thrown in, including blaring trumpets and some explosive drums. And the flourishes range from glockenspiel to horns to harmonica. Without them, the music would seem a little too bare and ordinary.

And cheerleaders, of course -- there are some rousing cheerleader chants, exploding from the foot-stomping "Huddle Formation" and playfully chaotic "The Power Is On." It sounds like a football-game-turned-rave, with just the right amount of energetic messiness.

Imagine the Propellerheads on a sunny day, and you have the basic sound of the Go! Team. "Thunder Lightning Strike" -- perfect for summer partying.

The Go! Team; Thunder Lightning Strike
Have you ever been to one of those clubs where the DJ plays everything from Break Beats to 70's TV Themes, Acid Jazz to The Kinks, Hip Hop to Northern Soul, yet the whole thing is so infectious you can't stop dancing?
Thunder Lightning Strike is everything that you love about those nights.
It is impossibly cool, the sort of record you leave on loud in the car with the windows down, so everyone else hears how cool you are. If you like Hip Hop, Indie, Northern Soul, Funk, Breaks, Cheese or Big Beat, you will like this and its certainly a must for any DJ looking to throw something interesting into the mix. Every tune's a winner. Buy it now.