Bocce

Taking their name from a slow paced game of the bowling family - Bocce are a Canadian trio who are nothing like a gentle ball game - aimed at old men (saying that my dad is pretty rad). There are keyboards galore and some spot on drumming, both combine to create this dancey and mischievous sound that you could perhaps equate to sounding like a mix of Think About Life and The Octopus Project. 'Hi Birdbear / Can't Reason Do It?' is their album, good it is, released back in 2006 this definitely counts as a missed gem. - Keytars And Violins

Ultimately, I was hoping Hillside would introduce me to some new artists, which is why I am so glad I caught Kitchener-Waterloo based group, Bocce. Infectious beats? Don’t even get me started! The vibe at Hillside has a reputation for being relaxed and enthusiastic, but I love it when lesser-known bands have the confidence, stage prescence and sense of humour enough to play to a hockey arena full of potential fans like we already know them. They came down from the stage to dance, invited a trumpet player up for a solo and wielded hockey sticks as though they were swords. They were the kings of the Island Stage. They had us singing along to Disco Juan, and when you hear it, you’ll want to sing along, too. Bocce has a lot of keyboards and a lot of keyboard players. And they headbang. While playing the keyboards. And I think that’s fucking awesome. Check ‘em out on myspace and dadmobile records. I guarantee they’re worth your time.

(exceprt of article available at http://www.soundsalvationarmy.com/?p=351) - Sound Salvation Army

The music programming in general was bang-on, with the kind of diversity the festival is known for.

By the time Shout Out Out Out Out came on with their dance-rock-electronic act, the energy level was through the roof.

Wintersleep drew a big crowd and did the best they could with a short set, considering they're at their best when their moody, hard-driving songs have some room to breathe.

The surprise band of the day was Waterloo's Bocce, who turned heads with fantastic uptempo electronic music and fun stage antics.

(excerpt of full article found at http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/290124) - Guelph Mercury

LIVE: Bocce Bring High-Quality Rave

There's a lot I want to say about Gravity Wave's foray into animation, Steam Whistle's security, and Hexes And Ohs, but all that has to wait. Enthusiasm must supersede chronology here, because I can't wait to blow my wad and tell you how sen-fucking-sational Bocce are.

There are a lot of bands these days compressing dance music into three-minute pop songs and Bocce are one of the best. It's interesting to note that Woodhands, who were originally scheduled to DJ, had to cancel because they were playing a show in Beijing, China. Meanwhile, Bocce, who can easily equal Woodhands' musicianship and stage presence, got the middle slot on the bill. It's time to start paying attention to the four-piece rave band from Waterloo, Ont. because they know how to bring the party. - Chart Magazine

Not Your Grandma's Game Of Bocce
Reviewed By Jennifer Carroll

A mass of indie rock-dance fanatics gathered at ebar last Thursday night to check out CFRU 93.3's RYV 015 – the 15th instalment of their Raise Your Voice fundraiser series – featuring Tin and Bocce.

Guelph-based instrumental quintet Tin came on just after 10:30, turning heads of those eager to watch their instrumental lunacy. Their soft serenades that erupt into blasts of erratic rhythm are pleasantly unpredictable. The band takes delight in sound-play, incorporating basic elements of musical genres from across the board, from jazz to classical to electronic.

The faintest background voices layer atop psychotic rhythmic turns, eventually resulting in a sound that is haunting, intriguing, and certainly unique. Their song titles are activities (their album is called Activity) like "Percolating" and "Necking". Tin reminds us that instrumentalism can be more enticingly descriptive than the catchiest of lyrics.

The Tin guys surely left "Dancing" up to the connoisseurs of getting down: Bocce. I first saw Bocce perform at Hillside Inside in February where I was entirely blown away by their ability to engulf a crowd with their zesty electronic-techno fever. It's no surprise these guys have been throwing people head over heels at shows. Their performance is a knockout; there's never a dull moment!

On Thursday night they once again threw the crowd into dancing cahoots for one thrilling hour. I can't get past Ben Ong's backdrop of rampant yelling; his frenzied blasts add fuel to Bocce's rhythmic fire. My favourite moment Thursday was the same as my favourite moment at Hillside: when a red-faced Tony Salomone came barrelling off the stage during "Disco Juan" while screaming "Sham!" into the mic.

That is the charm of Bocce: they love being on stage and they love their crowd, and there is never a lull in energy. Their oomph flowed through Thursday's mass of dance enthusiasts, and I can safely say that I haven't witnessed such an involved group of listeners at a show in a long time: there was much clapping, yelling, loving, and surely not a still foot in the room.

A sweaty mass of contentedly sore throats and fulfilled dancing shoes left ebar Thursday night having also raised funds for CFRU 93.3 FM and collected non-perishables for the Guelph Food Bank. How's that for giving to receive? - University Of Guelph Ontarion

Uncommon synths

Waterloo’s Bocce is one of Canada’s
best rock bands, no guitars required

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Always a bridesmaid, never the bride. “Nik [Must], Ben [Ong] and I,” says Bocce’s Tony Salomone, “we’re all keyboard players by trade, and at least Nik and I have been keyboard players in rock bands. It’s strange, because no matter what, you’ll always be the keyboard player in the guitar band. When you go to a venue and they see a guitar, bass and keyboards, the first thing the sound guy does is make sure the guitar and bass come cranking through the P.A. The keyboards are always an afterthought.”

Second-class citizens no longer, the Waterloo, ON quartet—rounded out by drummer Mike Bond who, ironically, founded Bocce as a desktop solo project two years ago—is solidly about the synths, no strings attached (if you’ll excuse the pun).

“We do have this rock background, that’s how we got into music, but Nik and I are more classically trained on keyboards, and the first music I was making, when I was 13, was on a ghetto blaster with a little Yamaha keyboard and a drum machine or something.

“Rock shows have a lot of energy live, and dance shows do too, but I get frustrated when I go to see, say, a guy up there with a laptop. I don’t feel the same connect. The other thing is, you know the traditional image of a guy rockin’ on guitar—we get up there and play synths on stage, there’s still the same energy to it.”

The lazy man’s touchstone here would be the electro-rock of LCD Soundsystem, mirrored in Bocce tracks like “Disco Juan,” a high point on last year’s excellent Hi Birdbear album (on Salomone’s own Dadmobile label), or the cheeky takeoff title “Bahai Cassette Is Playing at My House.” At the same time, when Bocce ease off the dancefloor activation and unfurl one of their more sublime synthesizer jams, like the sparkling “Ping Pong Pixel,” they’re following a line back through New Order to the rich, macroscopic melodies of Krautrockers Harmonia and Tangerine Dream. The final product is among the finest presently happening in Canada, and as serenely beautiful as much of Bocce’s music is, their live shows are exhilarating to the point of absurdity.

“That’s almost a struggle we have. We want to write… I don’t know if it’s the right word, but serious music. The point is, we’re four guys who are pretty relaxed, fun-loving people, and we like our live shows to be a lot of fun for people who are watching. That’s why things sometimes come across a little goofy.”

Who’s complaining? In any case, the shows have allowed Bocce to workshop and road-test material for their next album over the course of the last eight months, reversing Hi Birdbear’s studio-to-stage equation and allowing their crowds to arbitrate the track listing by way of applause and woo-hoos.

“Every single song has been performed live before any work was done in the studio,” says Salomone, “and that’s had a profound effect on the sound. We don’t want to deviate from where we were going with Birdbear, but just from playing them, the songs have more energy.”

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2007/100407/music5.html - Montreal Mirror

Years in the making, Disambiguation is a mesmerizing dance pop affair, furthering the notion that Waterloo, ON's Bocce are one of the most multi-dimensional electronic bands in Canada. Sometimes, in the frenzy of their fevered live performances, it's easy to miss how much attention Bocce pay to songwriting dynamics and building songs up beyond cheap thrills. They're a witty quartet with a sly sense of humour that comes across on the spirited uplift of "Highlighter (Reverse Video)" and the jingle-y "Wheel of Fortune Cookie (Before and After)." But there's a sombre aspect to the Depeche Mode tone of "Confident Confidant (Forget Everything)" or even the murky malaise evident on "Transmission (Telecommunications)." It's all pulsing, head-nodding stuff, but with Disambiguation, Bocce measure the physical bombast of the dance floor by stimulating our other senses too. - Exclaim

It’s taken more than three years, but Waterloo’s favourite electro-rockers Bocce have finally released their full-length debut album, after establishing a national profile with recent appearances at Pop Montreal, Hillside Inside and Canadian Music Week. Although largely instrumental, the album, entitled Disambiguation, is built upon a loose theme of each track representing a specific item, either real or imagined.

Tony Salamone, one of the group’s three keyboardists, says the album’s concept actually came late in the recording process, a process he can’t believe dragged on so long. “Even six months after we released our first single (Hi Birdbear) we felt like our sound changed drastically and we suddenly placed these high expectations on ourselves,” he says.

“I guess we wanted this album to be a reflection of where we were at the time, but we ended up just tweaking it too much. There comes a point where you just have to get it out and move on. But I think the patience paid off, because we all feel really good about it. As far as the song titles go, some of the songs had titles that could be interpreted in several different ways, so almost at the last minute we decided to refer to them in very specific ways, according to what we felt the music represented.”

Salamone adds that the group’s songwriting process also played a role in how long it took for Disambiguation to come together. “We all played in guitar bands before this, so we recognize that it’s a totally different way of working,” he says. “In Bocce I think we all have to spend a lot more time on our own with our ideas before we present them to the band. When you use a lot of keyboards like we do, it takes a lot longer to get the sounds close to what you hear in your head, and when all of us are in the same room together trying to do that, it can just be total chaos.”

Harnessing that chaos is part of Bocce’s live sound as well, and they’ve been finding more and more acceptance among rock audiences.

“It’s not difficult to win over audiences with this kind of stuff,” Salamone says. “Maybe it’s because of the bands we know that we get the shows we do, but I don’t think we play the kind of thumping club music people normally dance to on a Saturday night. I think when we play live our rock sensibilities come out a lot more.”

As for what songs on Disambiguation stand out most, closing track Luis Sojo has possibly the most intriguing background story. “I grew up in St. Catharines, when one of the Toronto Blue Jays farm teams was there,” Salamone says. “There was point when Luis Sojo played a few games and I was excited to get his autograph. He signed a ball for me in big block letters S-O-J-O and I thought it was the coolest thing. I lost the ball somewhere though, but I still wanted to pay some kind of tribute to him for doing that.” - Guelph Mercury

Hi Birdbear/Can't Reason Do It? is a mushroom cloud explosion of keyboards, omnichord and drums. Think Ratatat plus two members and piles of keys and energy, rolled in pop rocks with sparklers coming out of their ears. This is music that will increase your heart rate and expand your concept of electronic music. From the moment opening track "Ping Pong Pixel" fades in with its dramatic tornado of organs, this EP of new songs and remixes doesn't let up. Because of the live drumming, ghosts of Shout Out Out Out Out percussion float by, but that's soon forgotten when Bocce's soul-punk vocals come into play on the computerized rock of "Disco Juan." The new songs are big and noisy with layers of synths and percussion, but Birdbear has quiet moments, notably the conclusion of "Augustin St.," a horn-filled dance song that features a choir. The three remixes are a suitably sparse bonus to this astounding collection. - Chart Magazine

Bocce are hip, Bloc Party hip. They are less Radiohead’s The Bends gone new wave and more Godspeed’s entire family acting immature and being electrocuted. It’s easy hearing “Ping Pong Pixel” blossoming into the verdant tech-house homage of “Bahai Cassette is Playing at My House (Dadmobile Underwater House),” without the choral chanting or satirical name-checking, to say that these guys have the digital range of Do Make Say Think trying to play their way out of an FTP file nobody’s opened. They’ve got strings and horns; they’ve got a cool-on-paper C.V. of PWYC parties and live associations with some of Canada’s most hyped yet underrated acts (Torngat, Caribou, Kids on TV). But it’s just too easy to give these guys parsimony with all this “credibility” at their back. The hater in me is too jaded. The name even gives them a rhetorical retort to PhDs like me and with lines like, “I’ll be cumming in your life/in your wife/in a lot of things you own,” you’d have to be missing the joke to say that a band synonymous with a game of finesse over power can’t quite “do it” for you. Instead, here’s a cheap shot: they’re so hip you know how it feels.(Dadmobile) - Exclaim Magazine

Slapping together luminous, laser-guided synth motifs and classic drum-kit crash ’n’ bash, this Waterloo, Ont. quartet find their place in the growing dancefloor trance-punk genre. “Disco Juan” is a definite DFA pastiche, though one that gives James Murphy a run for his money, while opener “Ping Pong Pixel” is propelled by post-Floyd prog keys and Reich-style serialism. But who’s complaining? “Bears” boasts a brutish bombast, but Bocce can also take it down a notch, as on “Again Again Again Again,” and capture a sweetness elusive to many of their peers. Fingers crossed for a show here in Montreal soon. 8.5/10 (Rupert Bottenberg) - Montreal Mirror

WL 369 - Sunday, June 24 – 12am
Purveyors of: Digital-Analog Muscle Memory

If you like your dance music live then Bocce is a dream come true; their synthy symphonies anchor wildly infectious beats beneath layers and layers of striking keyboard melodies. One by one, Mike Bond, Ben Ong, Nik Must, and Tony Salomone, four long-time leaders in the Kitchener-Waterloo music scene, have come together to build Bocce's brilliant live show, which will make its Wavelength debut on June 24 th. Synth player/vocalist Tony Salomone kindly shared his band's silence-shattering and body-shaking secrets with Mika Posen.

The very first time I saw Bocce in the summer of 2005, it consisted of Mike Bond on drums, Ben Ong on keyboard, and a Discman playing the backing track. Now every time I see you there always seems to be a new member and a new keyboard or two. Explain how the band has evolved over the last few years.

Bocce essentially started as a studio project for Mike. Over time, as we've added members and keyboards, I think we've begun to operate more and more like a "rock band", except that we play electronic music. I think that the band's underlying philosophy has always been to take the best parts of both worlds of music.

Exactly how many keyboards do you use these days, and what kinds? Do you predict any future keyboard expansions? How many keyboards would it take to reach a point of total keyboard saturation in a band such as yours?

If I had it my way, I would have so many keyboards surrounding me on stage that they would have to lower me into place with a crane, or have me come through the floor like Neil Peart. The only thing holding me back is that our van is too small and I'm way too lazy to carry all of that equipment.

Our setup constantly changes because we keep destroying our instruments. Bocce has murdered many keyboards, including my very first electric piano. I think we reached our lowest point when we destroyed a classic old Yamaha Electone while trying to "optimize" it four days before leaving on tour. Bocce can't write songs in certain keys because the Casio Tonebank we use has some keys that don't work.

Our live setup is generally a mix of one analog synth through distortion, one fat bass synth, a MicroKorg for digital leads and bleeps, Casio Tonebank and Omnichord to keep things real. Mike also rocks an old Roland drum machine for added percussion.

When were vocals introduced into your music? Did that bring about any significant changes in the way your music and your live shows are received?

Vocals were mostly my fault. I used to freestyle over the songs that became "Bears" and "Disco Juan". Bicycle Cops even had vocals at one point, but it was mostly Ben and I yelling "Raptor!" Eventually, we had to settle on lyrics when we recorded the album. Originally, Bears was sung from the perspective of Goldilocks. At another point it was about a vegetarian trying to decide if laboratory-created meat was okay to eat. Several of our new songs have vocals but I think we'll always be pretty heavily instrumental.

Tell us a little about your label, Dadmobile records.

I started Dadmobile Records seven years ago as a way of organizing the twelve bands I played in. Last year, I decided to "get serious" by trimming the lineup down and focusing my efforts (it's just Bocce and Knock Knock Ginger, nowadays). Focus is important for ADD sufferers like myself.

Oddly enough, the fact that KKG and Bocce sound nothing alike has worked well for us. The two bands have attracted completely different audiences, and that attention has bled between the two bands well.

Rank your band members is order of average sweatiness after a show (from most sweaty to least sweaty).

If we're judging based solely on how we look on stage then the order is: Tony, Nik, Mike, Ben. This does not take in to account, however, that one of our members is seated all show and accumulates a tremendous amount of swass.

Your music is quite danceable. What sort of dance moves do you expect to see on the Sneaky Dee's dance floor at your Wavelength show?

Bocce is bringing the Rubber Beat to Toronto. Here is how to dance properly to this latest craze:

1. Pretend your left arm is a skipping rope tied to your body and there's a kid swinging the other end up and down.
2. Pretend your right arm is the coastal waters of Australia and there's a dude surfing up towards your head.
3. Pretend your feet are stuck to the floor and move your body like your are a cobra and the band is a snake charmer.

Try to get all of this working in sync or you'll look like a complete tool. (More so.)

By Mika Posen - Wavelength Zine