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The Go! Team announce new album, Semicircle

By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 12 October 2017

I know you thought The Go! Team were gone forever, but you were very wrong, because they’ve got a new album coming out next year. The follow-up to 2015’s ‘The Scene Between’, ‘Semicircle’ will be released through Memphis Industries on 19 Jan.

News of the new record comes accompanied by new music, in the form of ‘Semicircle Song’, of which band leader Ian Parton says: “With ‘Semicircle Song’ I was trying to take the technicolour feel of a marching band into a more psychedelic place, reclaiming that sound from patriotic or sporty bullshit and harnessing its toughness and power. Brass which takes your head off, bouncy xylophones, offbeat handclaps and toms hopping in the gaps – I hoped it would be recognisably The Go! Team but unlike any song we’d done before. Something more about the space between the notes. But when the notes hit, you make them count.”.

He continues: “Vocals were laid down by a bunch of teenagers in Detroit, which is a musical mecca for me. In the middle eight I thought it would add a kinda interstellar cheekiness if they each introduced themselves and their star sign”.

If you’re thinking to yourself, ‘that all sounds great’, you are right to think that, because it’s really, really great. Listen here:

Of the album as a whole, Parton adds that it’s a cautiously hopeful reflection of our times, saying: “It’s about reminding yourself of the good things in life. We don’t want to be dumbly optimistic and say, ‘Hey, isn’t everything great!’, but there’s something to be said for just getting on with it, for getting organised and not letting the fuckers get you down. Party for your right to fight!”

But will there be tour dates? Yes, there will be tour dates:

9 Feb: Glasgow, Oran Mor
10 Feb: Leeds, Wardrobe
11 Feb: Brighton, Haunt
15 Feb: London, Electric Ballroom
16 Feb: Newcastle, Riverside
17 Feb: Manchester, Gorilla