Live At The Village, Dublin

We should have been warned. For a while now the whispers have been that, no matter how good The Go! Team were on record (ie. bloody fantastic) it wasn't a patch on the live experience. All well and good but, believe me, nothing could have prepared us to become part of a mass of waving arms, grinning inanely and chanting Go! Team as if our lives depended on it. It was that kind of night.
The secret to their success lies mainly in the delivery, taking what is basically a product of the studio and turning it into a living, breathing twelve legged groove machine. The beats are so strong that they often need two drummers to pound them out and the easy route of using samples is abandoned in favour of a succession of instruments including harmonicas, recorders and banjos.
The key piece of the puzzle however is vocalist Ninja, a one woman encapsulation of the Go! Team philosophy. She raps like a pro, sings like a soul queen, dances like a South London Supreme and has the packed audience eating out of the palm of her hand with her engagingly unpolished between-song banter. Like the band themselves she manages to be both utterly cool and uncool at the same time, and that's what makes them all so loveable. That and the fact that this is perhaps the best gig I’ve seen in Ireland for five years.
Up until now being privy to the Go! Team phenomenon has been like being part of a select club. Six more months of shows like this, however, and the whole world will know their name.