Go:Audio

With the rugged good lucks of Busted and pop sensibilities of McFly, it would be easy to tag Go:Audio as the latest Fearne Cotton-friendly kids' band. That would be a big mistake. Beyond their neatly-trimmed hair and chiseled jaw lines, Go:Audio are capable of mashing up computer-generated rave beats with Blink 182-style punk guitar riffs. The result is a sound somewhere in between the American dude-rock of Hellogoodbye and the psychedelic wizardry of British nu-rave acts like Klaxons and Enter Shikari. They've called it 'pop-rave', which sums it up quite nicely. We caught up Josh from the band to chat about their new 'Woodchuck' EP.

How did Go:Audio first get together?
"Zack and me are brothers, so we've been making music all our lives. He went off to Uni four years ago and then I met James, our singer. James and me started writing songs together, and four years later Zack finished Uni and joined the band. Then we started gigging, putting the drums and bass guitar on my laptop. The problem was, when we went onstage it didn't feel natural having the drums on a backing track - we couldn't rock out. That's when we got Andy in on drums. We still have bass guitar on the Mac, because we want to keep it quite electronic."

Do you ever find it weird touring with your brother?
"Loads of my mates think it's quite weird as well, but it seems absolutely cool to me. We've never had one problem and we get on so well. Him and James are best mates, so it's fine. It's easy."

How would you describe your music? You seem to straddle a lot of genres?
"People want to put us into one category, but we want to fill all groups - pop, rock and dance. I always say this now, but hopefully we're a dance band you can rock out to, or a rock band you can dance to. A bit of everything."

What bands did you listen to growing up?
"I used to be into classical music when I was young - I played the violin - but Zack got me into Green Day and Blink 182. Other than that, you've got groups like Taking Back Sunday, Brand New and Hellogoodbye, and then I like stuff like DJ Sammy..."

DJ Sammy?
"Yeah, it's shameless dance stuff. I also like Pendulum - anything with a good beat to it basically."

Do you think your classical background has helped the band in any way?
"There's a lot of piano in our songs, which I don't think we'd have even been able to do if I hadn't learnt classically. Musically, it's all helped really."

What can people expect from the Go:Audio live experience?
"Part of our set is pretty heavy and other parts are like a rave. That's what people seem to love really, so that's what we're going to focus on. People seemed to really get into that when we were touring with Hellogoodbye."

You're determined not to employ a bass player. Is there any particular reason for that?
"A lot of the bass guitar is programmed. We wanted to keep it like that to make it more dancey and electronic. It's not because of some fall-out with a bass player or anything like that."

Your new EP is called 'Woodchuck'. Can you tell us what the title means?
"Honestly, it means absolutely nothing. It's the most random song ever - the lyrics are vaguely about a girl, and the title is so random it's ridiculous. That's the reason we came up with it really, it's quite funny."

So we've been sat here all morning trying to figure it out for no reason?
"Yep! People always write on our MySpace: 'How much wood can a woodchuck chuck.' It's really random and funny."

Is the EP a good representation of what we can expect from your debut album?
"The album has got some dancier moments than are on the EP, some darker moments and some more chilled-out segments. Yeah, the EP is a taster, but I think the album's a more exaggerated version of it."

Do you mind being tagged as a nu-rave band?
"I'm into bands like Enter Shikari and they're obviously doing really well with the nu-rave thing, but I don't think I'd describe us as nu-rave. I'd probably call us pop-rave, if there is such a thing. We just want it to be really good fun so that people can dance to it basically."

Go:Audio release the 'Woodchuck' EP on March 3.