Basco really just want to tell you some stories. Their music is complex and varied, from hard hitting, high-speed reels full of rosin dust and sweat, through sweet and melancholy tunes that tell of loves won and lost, through fitful fever-dreams of fractal complexity and fascinating texture, to songs that when you come down to it, are really just about sex.
Basco’s material is nearly all original, stealing shamelessly and frivolously from Scandinavian, English, Celtic and American idioms to create a kind of organic, soupy stew – full of vitamins and anti-oxidants.
If you give it a chance, it’ll lure you into the forest, give you a magic sleeping draught and keep you prisoner in a gilded cage in a tower on a hill in the darkest reaches surrounded by briars until a prince comes and saves you. But in a nice way, obviously.
Dazzling … Basco were definitely the weekend’s most popular discovery, with tremendous ensemble verve and richly textured arrangements
The Scotsman