Pick a Piper - Still Awake
Ontario electronic experimentalist Brad Weber aka Pick A Piper releases his most gripping and emotional collection of songs yet, Distance, on March 3rd. Weber – also known for his role in dance favourites Caribou – has ventured everywhere from Chernobyl and Guatemala to the Canadian Arctic, northern mountains of Japan and south America since his first release as Pick A Piper. On this new album, he lets that influence show. A bewitching slow-rave travelogue of sounds and stories picked up along the way, it’s a record that simmers with both the excitement of adventuring to these locales, and the melancholy of the people you leave behind to visit them. “It’s a great source of heartache, but also a great source of joy,” Weber explains of an album “about trying to balance connectivity with chronically being away.” Distance, like the scene in all good postcards, you’ll long to return to again and again.
Alongside band mates Angus Fraser and Dan Roberts, Weber has been making music as Pick A Piper since 2009. What started off as a strange campfire folk project has mutated across one EP, a remix album and a self-titled 2013 album into a boundary-pushing polyrhythmic beast that takes influence from ‘70s Turkish psych, classic Afrobeat, synth pioneers like Laurie Spiegel and contemporary club music. Sound eclectic? Wait till you hear Distance. From the Gamelan percussion of ‘January Feels Lost’, inspired by recent trips to Bali, to the hypnotising sway of ‘Further and Further’ – a collaboration with shoegazey J-pop hit-maker LLLL and singer Makota – the album is the first time Weber has “let songs breathe, not forcing them into a common aesthetic.” The result is an collection of tracks that throb with unrestrained ideas and invention. “I’m a fairly positive and reflective person,” says Weber. “But I’m also antsy, restless.”
‘Still Awake’ is about the sleep paralysis Weber has wrestled with since age 18.
European Live Dates
16th February – Vooruit, Ghent (Belgium)
17th February – Bad Bonn, Dudingen (Switzerland)
18th February – Albani, Winterthur (Switzerland)
20th February – Drapers’ Bar & Kitchen, Coventry (UK)
21st February – The Waiting Room, London (UK
24th February – Monarch, Berlin (Germany)
25th February – De Gudde Wallen, Luxembourg City (Luxembourg)
1st March – Diagonal, Forli (Italy)
2nd March – Teatro Sanzio, Urbino (Italy)
3rd March – Lio Bar, Brescia (Italy)
