Live and not so dangerous...

My last post ended on a sombre note. At the other end of the scale come festivals. While much is made of the risks most of them are probably far safer places to be than out in almost any town on a Friday or Saturday night. Pick-pocketing and other theft aside, you probably aren't going to find, or even see or hear of, much trouble unless you go looking for it. I'm, as already mentioned, going to Latitude 2008 and I went to last year's one too and the fact that I was going on my own bothered me slightly until I got there. That I couldn't really imagine a more friendly place to be occurred to me in the first hour I was there.

The set list is interesting me more with every addition. One thing that was of interest was quite how anything could equal the exuberant madness of CSS? I had two thoughts, CSS (again, their new album is being hatched) and Operator Please! (who I'd love to see live). Later it occurred to me that we have a UK band more than capable of fulfilling the requirements for enthusiastic mayhem and, recent acts confirmed for Latitude 2008, indicated that they are the chosen ones.
Ian Parton formed the live incarnation of The Go! Team to tour with Franz Ferdinand (also at Latitude 2008) in 2004.

This was their magnificent début album, on the tiny indie label Memphis Industries, in 2004. It is an almost indescribable thing comprised of a collection of shiny beats, samples and other bits that would make a magpie with real addiction issues turn green with envy. It has has been reissued, partly for sample clearance in the US, and also later incorporating a couple of additional tracks. It remains as good now as it was when first released, so there would be difficult second album issues, right?

No! Proof Of Youth (2007) is every bit as good, in some ways even better. The band - a six-piece - are hardly short of writing talent and this time it really shows on the album. That is not to say that they have compromised either their propulsive enthusiasm or the rather unusual multi-threaded and eclectic dynamic. When it suits them they can muster four drummers simultaneously though only two, Chi Fukami Taylor and Sam Dook, are normally thus employed and in Ninja they have a very versatile singer/rapper. If she reminds me slightly of anyone it is Lauryn Hill.

Another Latitude 2008 act, one already announced, is Death Cab for Cutie. The album 'Narrow Stairs' is released in the UK next Monday (12th May) and is getting very favorable reviews by people in the press whose opinions I trust.