Pick a Piper^CA

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.