Basketball

It only takes hearing a couple seconds of Basketball's music to realize the band are extremely world-minded. Since starting up a couple of years ago, the eclectic Vancouver, BC combo have managed to jumble Euro-centric club music, African rhythms, Croatian-sung lyrics and skittered electro beats into their kitchen-sink sound. The group even took off in 2008 for a year-long residency in Barcelona, bringing back with them an even more dance-driven aesthetic, as well as a stronger sense of purpose. Since their return to Canada last fall, they've been hard at work on their debut album.

Unfortunately, we may have to wait a bit longer for that full-length, as the band have headed out for Africa.

In an interview with Exclaim!, vocalist Tome Jozic states that the act are indeed sitting on a number of tracks but feels that most of them can stand a little outside work. In a move he hopes inspires some great results, he and multi-instrumentalist Luka Rogers will be travelling around Morocco and Algeria, among other spots, to find some brave new beats.

"Luka and I are heading to North Africa for our initial recruitment of extended members into Basketball," Jozic says. "Sampling sounds from our well of ancestry has been a large part of Basketball and as much as possible, we intend to move towards sampling people/musicians we've made connections with globally. The plan is to spend time with friends and musicians and involve them in our project; playing our rough track recordings for them, and if they're so inspired, recording them on the spot, bringing these recordings back to Vancouver and including them in our songs. The climax being in the future where these people would join us on stage to perform these songs in their homelands and wherever possible."

Though Basketball will be sidelined from gigging for the next little bit, fans of the band can take solace in a parting gift: the group's new single, "Suspiros de Chile." The mind-expanding rave number, which can be heard below, furthers Basketball's culture-mashing abilities by bringing together South American drum cadences, early '90s break beats, ear-piercing shehnai loops and a barrage of melodic chants. The sensory-flooding song is overwhelmingly awesome, to say the least.

It's the first of what the troupe hope to be a series of leaked singles to tease their new record.

"We'll be releasing a few intermittently over the next couple months as we wrap up this saga of a recording process this month," Jozic explains. "We want nothing more than to have it as accessible as possible, and until the official release, sharing these songs for free via interwaves."

Though Basketball are currently without a label, they hope to release their album early next year. - Exclaim! Magazine

"Basketball wander beneath night skies patterned with LED constellations across the same pixelated Paper Rad deserts frequented by like-minded sonic nomads and purveyors of jagged Sublime Frequency inspired noise Rainbow Arabia and Mi Ami, dragging behind them broken drums and malfunctioning machines forever talking in tongues attached to a trail of fluorescent wires slithering across the dust bowl like a congregation of snakes. Out there on the plains they erect a giant crystal rave tent in preparation for the forthcoming sandstorms with the ancient native tribes people they encountered as a circus of silhouettes before a moon that could have swallowed them as they sat atop their mechanical chrome camels. In the tent they collaborate to conjure up an intoxicating mauve mist of shamanic disco, vocal gabba straining to fight against the sheets of HEALTH like metallic trance that rhythmically collide with the bubbling of broken-bone riddims that sends everybodies eyeballs rolling into the backs of their heads as they await to wake in the center of the eye." 20JazzFunkGreats - 20 Jazz Funk Greats

"The whole tribal drum circle awash in throbbing synth loops with the lights off and sweat dripping off the roof thing that I witnessed with blurring eyes and swimming mind seemed like some sort of epoch. If they could figure out a way to bottle that shit like some Michael Jordan cologne and package it with good MDMA I could promise you that I would be showing up at all foreseeable special occasions smelling and feeling like a fresh dose of The Best Night Ever."
"ChalkedUp Magazine" - Chalked Up Magazine

"Basketball serve up an alternative tribal offering that we’ve never heard the likes of before. Double dribbling Croatian/English vocals over Persian pipes and hammered home with big beats, and it gets better as it gets louder. This tribal trio have roots in Vancouver, Croatia and Barcelona and music doesn’t get any more exotic than this, sounding like a street carnival in Eastern Europe with electronic fusion. Our scoreboard reads slam dunk."
Subbacultcha! Magazine - Subbacultcha! Magazine

http://exclaim.ca/musicreviews/latestsub.aspx?csid1=135&csid2=870&fid1=40718

Filastine / Basketball / Caving
Rickshaw Theatre, Vancouver, BC August 21
By Al Smith

Although Filastine is undoubtedly a well-established performer, the big draw here was the return of prodigal sons Basketball from an extended European sojourn. Having officially released only a split seven-inch, the Vancouver band became a hometown favourite last summer on the strength of their almost indescribable live performances.

First, Vancouver's man of a thousand projects, Andy Dixon, opened the show as Craving, playing booty-shaking, dub-inflected electronica from a laptop. Now, the Rickshaw is a big place, but Caving still managed to get a sizable contingent of people dancing in front of the stage, as others milled about the foyer and theatre seats.

Next up was Basketball, and to everyone's delight, they are basically the same band that left Vancouver a year ago. Vocalist Tome Jozic howled in Croatian and English above a bed of Euro-disco-influenced electronica and live drumming provided by multi-instrumentalists Davoud Rogria and Luka Rogers. The floor became a writhing mass of bodies, and venturing into this was Jozic, handing out percussion instruments to audience members, rapturously flinging handfuls of feathers into the air and inciting the general chaos that unfolded. It sounds schlocky, which it might have been if it wasn't so good.

As for Barcelona-based beatmaker Filastine, he commanded the attention of a more mainstream electronic music fan. Rolling his gear onstage in a shopping cart (which later became a percussion instrument), Filastine started well, with pulsing beats and a projected visual display that synced up well with the music. The set was soon derailed, however, by a malfunctioning subwoofer, which brought the show to a grinding halt twice during the evening.

Filastine is a strong performer, and his blend of esoteric percussion instruments with programmed electronica is innovative and works well. Unfortunately, the show never really picked up momentum, although some of the ecstatically dancing fans might have disagreed. Still, it's not much of a stretch to say that this night belonged to the previous act, with Vancouver welcoming Basketball back to town, and Basketball reminding Vancouver why we missed them.
- Exclaim

Something strange is happening in Canada. It seems like such a nice, happy country, but the haunted, malevolent music wheezing out from its bowels suggests a different story. Take Babe Rainbow, who makes dubstep death marches, spooked songs that stumble down endless, murky corridors.

Cameron Reed, the man behind the prismatic babe bow, recently collaborated with his creepy countrymen, Basketball. “This song frustrated the hell out of me,” he told me. “I wrote the melody and layered sounds pretty quickly but couldn't find a percussive pattern I liked. I've tried so many different drum loops and was never been happy with it.

... So my friends in Basketball did the percussion for me on this song.

- NME / Pinglewood "Canada Calling"

"The Evaporators finally got the lounging crowd to fill the area right in front of the stage, but only Basketball got the crowd moving. The local favourites' headlining set was a bittersweet affair, though. The performance itself was stellar, and the band enlisted some of their friends (from No Gold and Sex Negatives) to help give their droney, rhythmic synth jams an even more tribal sound via some extra percussion. But the night also marked the band's last Vancouver show, since all three members are relocating to Spain later this week. If the trio's move ends up being a permanent one, it was a hell of a way to say goodbye."
ChartAttack Magazine - Chart Attack Magazine

http://www.rockenroll.info/issues/2009/08/basketball1.php

A poor English Translation.

3 guests stand on the podium: warbler with tambourine, a percussionist, and a bud turner (with I love Gaza Tshirt). Them creren a chaotic mix, an eclectic collage.

Basketball exist from David: percussionist with Greek, Chinese, English and Canadian blood, Luca: bud turner with American, Italian and Canadian blood and warbler Tommy from Bosnia. Together she played in punk rock link in Canada and the United States.
After Tommy has Bosni visited touches he inspired by Arab tone ladders and electronic sounded of among other things video videospel Prince or Persia. The sound of Basketball has come about afterwards on a basis of European, African and Islamic influences. Inspiration also finds them in the Chicago house.

Song with resounds, formless sound with banging sample dance varied with African rhythms and Islamic striking as song.
The complete set exists from a consecution of always other musical topics which a couple half-measures is repeated: musical roadmovie. Of a traditional song advancement no talk is. It is NO cacophony like sometimes the case is in such compositions.

Somewhere halfway the set there a guy on the podium appears. He starts play the drums. After acting David say about this: That guy was best insistent. He wants already direct at the beginning of acting will play the drums. I said that it was not possible. Then said he that he a professional drummer was. It was moan that he does not know the numbers, if he she had known he of me the complete playing the drums apparatus could have got.

After approximately 40 minutes the zanger sounds deformed heavily concerning triphop-achtig a sound that on dubmanier has been treated. Then there a silence follows
The zanger adresses publicly: Okay Guys were gonna play one more song. So just false yourself, okay false yourself. There follows still certainly twenty minutes music.

During the last number there a dancer with yellow luminous sticks appears beside the podium. He solves voguet there. There an eclectic house sounded with dubstep bass and techo beat sounds. - Rock en Roll Magazine (Dutch)

Basketball
Kalcijum (Ache)

"A gleeful reimagining of New Order’s “Temptation as a dizzying Euro-disco banger rife with screeching synths and Croatian-gang vocals. Barcelona had better be enjoying local ex-pats Basketball as much as Vancouver should be missing them."
The Georgia Straight - The Georgia Straight

"Sounding like a demented hammering together of a dozen or so Sublime Frequencies comps, Basketball's tongue is split in Anglo-Croat halves, their tracks built upon Persian scales and they weave Romany rhythms in with what sounds like the last, panicked cries of a snake charmer's pungi. They aren't the sort of band you imagine Vancouver producing, then, but, recently relocated to Barcelona, their continent-hopping mania sounds infectious enough to provoke delirium among onlookers, this track "Joy" to be beamed to earth from space next month so that the world's populous may celebrate the coming of the spring as one, throbbing mass of limbs and giddy guts.

Sounds Like: El Guincho, Gang Gang Dance, Sublime Frequencies vs Girl Talk"
"Kev Kharas - RCRDLBL.com" - RCRDLBL.com

"We stuck around at Broken City and gave Basketball a little hometown love... I know I rave about them all the time, but the Calgary crowd was loving them, and when we were leaving I overheard a guy say "see, that's why Vancouver's music scene is so much better than ours."
-Quinn Omori - From Blown Speakers - From Blown Speakers Blog