Sonic youths

A few years ago, the Go! Team weren't so much a group as a one-man-band. Songwriter Ian Parton used to tinker about at his parents' home, turning out tracks that combined some of his great loves - cheesy cop show theme tunes, pop from the 1960s and the thrash guitar sound of US alternative rockers Sonic Youth.

The meld worked. Critics loved his EPs Get It Together and Junior Kickstart and in 2004 Parton was invited to play Sweden's annual Accelerator Festival before thousands of people.

'I agreed to it, but I don't think they knew we weren't a band,' he says from his home in the English seaside town of Brighton. 'A few weeks before, I had to hustle a band together. I left messages on internet notice boards, asked friends of friends. It was by any means necessary.'

With so little time before the Go! Team were due onstage, Parton's interview technique was to play all the applicants his music and ask them if they fancied bringing it to a live audience. He says there was no time for auditions, even for Ninja, the woman he chose to front the band as rapper and vocalist and who today is such a key part of the six-member group.

'Our first gig was before 2,000 people,' he says of their debut at Accelerator. 'We managed to bypass the playing to a few hundred people in the back rooms of pubs start that most bands have and go straight into festivals.'

Parton was either lucky, or has excellent judgment. The five bandmates he picked - Ninja; Sam Dook, electric guitar, banjo and drums; Chi 'Ky' Fukami Taylor, drums and vocals; Kaori Tsuchida, vocals, electric guitar, keyboards and melodica (who replaced Silke Steidinger last year); and Jamie Bell, bass - launched the Go! Team to an audience that loved their fusion of musical styles and on-stage antics.