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Pick a PiperCA

Pick a Piper<sup>CA</sup>
Pick a Piper

<span class="not-set">(not set)</span>

Slow-rave, melancholic pop confections built from polyrhythms and lush textures, Pick A Piper productions aim for the heart and the body—layering atmospheric sound design and club-informed structures filled with feels.

Brad Weber’s interest in music fired up when he began playing drums as a young teenager, before learning how to self-record music that synthesized electronic and acoustic influences—from shoegaze to Turkish psychedelia, Detroit techno to afrobeat. Working alongside bandmates Angus Fraser and Dan Roberts, Weber formed Pick A Piper in 2009, which slowly mutated from a weird-folk project into something decidedly more danceable, hypnotic, and affectively explorative. 2013’s self-titled debut garnered underground praise, which led to a handful of reverent remixes by fellow Canucks Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys and Caribou’s Dan Snaith. Four years later, 2017’s Distance album felt like a reflection of the time Weber spent touring with Caribou as a drummer—embracing the highs and lows of travelling from Japan to Chernobyl, South America to the Canadian Arctic. Betraying a deepening expertise with sound design, it blends organic sounds from addictively catchy woodblock percussion with murkier, hard-to-place synthetic influences. Taking the project into a live context, sometimes in a 3-man version, other times solo, Weber has morphed his songs into mostly instrumental formations, while hanging on to the emotional tenor of his style.

With a new album being teased on social media, Weber’s first appearance at MUTEK will bring together the varied strands of his expertise—dynamic drum patterns derived from mallet-based midi instruments and tactile percussion that trigger synths, samples and effects. Prepare for empathic, compelling music that keeps you fully in the moment.

Labels

Tin Angel Records, Mint Records, Phonica White, Full of Nothing

Latest

Distance (2017)

More

Weber turned his lifelong experience with sleep paralysis into the track “Still Awake” for which there is an accompanying 360 VR music video