Limited Edition Neon Pink Vinyl Pressing!

These are dark and difficult times. We don't need some chancer with an acoustic guitar and a series of concerned hashtags to tell us that. What we need is a band to believe in, who stand for something other than naked careerism, who give us a rock to cling to on stormy days. A band who still have faith in the power of pop music to transform the world, who dream in technicolour, who see beauty in the little things, who shun tepid perfection, who rejoice in the mistakes and the chance encounters that lead us somewhere new. Who remind us what it was like to be young and naive and idealistic and in love. Who throw everything into the pot to create music that is joyfully, effervescently alive.

Now more than ever, we need The Go! Team.

It's no secret that The Go! Team is the brainchild of one man, Brighton-based melody obsessive Ian Parton. But its membership has never been exclusive: at one time or another, The Go! Team has included on its squad-sheet everyone from Deerhoof to Chuck D to a legion of undiscovered Soundcloud singers. Unlike the group's previous album, 2015's The Scene Between – which was essentially a solo project, following the dissolution of the previous Go! Team line-up – Ian began work on their fifth album "SEMICIRCLE" with the vital input of current live band players Simone Odaranile (drums), Angela 'Maki' Won-Yin Mak (vocals and guitar) and original Team members Sam Dook (guitar) and Ninja (irrepressible rapping).

In Ian's head was the idea of a school marching band gone rogue, chucking away their sheet music to blast out Northern soul stompers, Japanese indie-pop swooners and old-school hip-hop jams. "I like the swing and the toughness of the drums in a marching band," explains Ian, "but I wanted to reclaim them from patriotic or sporty associations. That was the kick-off for this record." Yet his extensive sample library could only take him so far. In order to fully realise his vision he knew he had to reach out, to entice a group of unlikely new collaborators into The Go! Team fold.

So Ian made a pilgrimage to Detroit – city of Motown and The Stooges, of musical (and actual) revolution – where he hooked up with a local teenage community choir, the DYC. Their age was key; he didn't want kids (too twee) but nor he did he want adults, with all their emotional baggage and wariness and tendency to over sing. Equally he wanted to avoid the religious connotations of a church or gospel choir. It was important that these teenagers had come together for no reason other than to sing and feel empowered.

"I've always had a thing for gang vocals and group singing, particularly the roughness of community choirs," says Ian. "Normally they might be singing showtunes or whatever, but I like the idea of getting people to do something they wouldn't normally do. It's always a gamble, but in this case it paid off."

In keeping with the album's "marching band" theme, Ian opted to use live brass for the first time, with the aid of Antibalas founder, TV On The Radio arranger and Arcade Fire member Stuart Bogie. Instruments were mic'ed from a distance to recreate that authentic gymnasium sound. The effect is a gleeful cacophony of familiar sounds jostled into unfamiliar formations, comforting and intoxicating at the same time.

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