Basketball; an energetic four piece driven by live electronics, spirited vocals, and massive percussion create an inclusive primal sound that grows into pulsating dance beats. From Tome's vocals in his native tongues, Croatian and English, to the Persian scales, to the gypsy-esque spirit, their live performances, like rituals, induce mass dancing through catharsis, roping bodies into possession with their fierce thumping beats, and sparkling with eastern melodies. Their cargo: drum machines, a constellation of percussion, Turkish zurna, Persian santur, electric guitar, sub upon sub, and voice upon voice. The combination of their sound has drawn comparisons to Modeselektor, Gang Gang Dance, Buraka Som Sistema, The Joker and Tinariwen.
HAVE PLAYED WITH
Holy Fuck, The Very Best, Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, DJ Rupture, El Hijo de Cumbia, Women, HEALTH, Black Dice, Andy Moor (the Ex), Subtitle, Filastine, Need New Body, many more...
PRESS
"It only takes hearing a couple seconds of Basketball's music to realize the band are extremely world-minded. 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 sensory-flooding sound is overwhelmingly awesome, to say the least.
- Exclaim! Magazine
"Middle Eastern sounds with cut up drum-machine beats, Basketball ends up tapping into something primal, creating their own genre. You really have to see them live to experience it firsthand; like an orgy, it’s very much a communal thing."
- Discorder Magazine
"Basketball wander beneath night skies patterned with LED constellations across pixelated deserts like sonic nomads... dragging behind them broken drums and 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.
- 20JazzFunkGreats