The Go! Team sound a bit like what would happen if Fatboy Slim started doing 1970s American kids TV themes, except with a full live band rather than banks of synthesizers and samplers – indeed, apart from the brass section and the occasional sampled rhythm, the whole of their set is played completely live. Which is remarkable.

But before the Go! Team, we had the joy of the support acts. First up was Kid Carpet, a Bristol-based producer (because, y’know, we don’t have enough of those already) with a big stack of toy guitars, Casio keyboards and other retro paraphernalia. And a sampler, obviously. Fortunately, despite a tiny audience and his obvious nerves at playing to such a big, empty room, he put on a great performance (when his equipment was working). Highlights of the set included a genius remix of Jump by Van Halen using sound effects from 1980s video games, and Shiny Shiny New, an anthemic rant making excellent use of the cheap plastic toy guitar solo.

Following Kid Carpet was Lady Sovereign, who was, frankly, a bit unexpected. She’s a garage MC, you see, but she performs with a live band. She’s clearly a talented young lady, and comparisons with The Streets are going to be inevitable, although she’s quite a lot more shouty and angry than the erstwhile Mr Skinner. Entertaining enough, not really my cup of tea, but the song about battering someone with a broom handle made me grin a bit.

The Go! Team were, simply, awesome. Opening fairly predictably with Air Raid Guitar, they rocked through the whole of “Thunder Lightning Strike” and a couple of “bonus” tracks in a little over an hour. Whilst the album is a largely instrumental affair, when playing live their MC, Ninja, takes centre stage for most of the set, rapping, singing and improvising over the tracks whilst the rest of the band bounce effortlessly between a huge number of different instruments (including a glockenspiel, a recorder, two drumkits and many, many guitars). Okay, not everything was perfect – one guitarrist got halfway through a song before realising his guitar was downtuned by a tone, and there were several false starts – but thankfully nothing killed the fun and energy of the evening.

Plus, the drummer was cute. The girl, that is. That’s always a bonus.

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