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The Go! Team + Revenge Of Shinobi, Colchester Arts Centre, 13/06/07

Another gig full of teenagers, another night feeling old. And since when has Colchester moved inside the M25? Five quid for a double vodka and coke? Christ, no wonder I’m moving North.

You know my feelings on instrumental bands. All well and good, but very easy to noodle off into some dull little corridor. Revenge Of Shinobi are in no corridor. They were playing the tiny Arts Centre like it was Westminster Abbey. Loose stoner rhythms rise up to form satisfying head-nodding beats. Echoed vocals create an ambient haze like the sunrise over last night’s party. There are no meandering solos. Every chord, every item of percussion has its right place. And they may or may not have a song called Tune Sarpong. The expensive spirits might have been playing tricks on me.

From basement solo sample project to your one-stop partybus, The Go! Team must provide one of the best live shows in the country. The sheer number of them added to their musical versatility put to the square root of Ninja’s energy and charisma equals one hell of a show. Thunder, Lightning, Strike is transformed, bigger, louder, harder. The new songs follow suit. Each one of the Team gets a moment out front, be it playground piano solos, banjo swayalongs or exercise DVD workouts.

Whereas on record the samples took most of the attention, on stage Ninja is the main event. Throwing out lyrics, orchestrating her Team and splitting up the audience to see who can sing and dance the best, she is a star. But they function perfectly well without her, with instrumentals like Junior Kickstart allowing the guitarists to indulge in some stage-spanning scissor kicks. The new songs sounded solid, catchy, and could be the soundtrack of this summer if the untitled new album is released in time. We’ve even been promised a Chuck D collaboration, but unfortunately he couldn’t make it up the A12.

The night finished with a full length blow out of Ladyflash, and a sweltering Arts Centre was released upbeat and chattering into some welcome drizzle. It was one of those gigs that left a big grin on your face. No pretension, no scene, just an old fashioned dance-off. For this, and many other occasions, The Go! Team provide the ultimate soundtrack.