NORTHMIX: Pick A Piper

Ontario born percussionist Brad Weber is the front man of Pick A Piper and drummer for Caribou. As the newest member to our Northmix clan, Brad delivers a psychedelic mix that blurs the lines to encapsulate today's electronic music. The group has had their productions supported by some of the big cheeses in dance music—including that of Guy Gerber, who opened his essential mix last fall with their track "Lucid In Fjords." Factor in Brad's time at the Red Bull Music Academy, and the future for Pick A Piper looks quite bright. Amidst his tour with Caribou, THUMP recently caught up with Brad while on the road.

THUMP: Your self-titled album—although meticulously layered—does not sound over-produced. How would you describe what you've been doing and creating with Pick a Piper?
Brad: On this record, I tried to take a scaled back approach [for me] and end up with compositions that you could easily peel layers from and discover new sounds as you go. I get a lot of enjoyment out of mining sounds from varying sources. Sometimes it may be a single drum hit off an old record, or an acoustic sound that I've treated to sound synthetic. Or [even] a weird wash of noises that I've created at home using objects that weren't intended for music making. In general I love using lo-fi techniques to create something with depth and clarity, if that makes any sense. I'm hoping to create a balance of recognizable sounds and techniques with elements whose origins are hard to pin down.

Do you set out to produce dance music? Or, does your music find its way to the dance floor in the process?
If you forced me to write a straight up dance banger from its inception, I would likely do a terrible job. Being a drummer first and foremost and listening to a lot of music where rhythm is very important—such as afro-beat, cumbia, samba, tropicalia, and disco—the dance world seems to seep into my recordings in a very natural way.

What is your approach to your live sets? Some of your recorded sets thus far have been very eclectic in both tracks selections and sounds.
Our live sets feature the three of us, and has a heavy focus on drums and percussion. Each member has a drum kit next to them of varying sizes, as well as a MalletKat midi marimba. It's used to play percussive elements, melodic ones, as well as external drum loops that are triggered. This is combined with live processed vocals, as well as devices that are used to perform a wide variety of sounds that we like to employ. It's important to us to play as "live" as possible and with that in mind we have a set up that allows us to extend sections if necessary and not always play the songs the exact same way from night to night. Using a variety of keyboards, midi controllers and samplers onstage, the goal is to make live electronic music as exciting as possible—both in the way the show sounds and looks. It's something people don't talk about much, but I think it's important for fans to see what we're doing onstage. We try to avoid hiding behind a rack of gear and have everything open and laid out in a way that people can immerse themselves in the experience in any way they choose—really be a part of it.

Focusing more on the history of the project, what would you say have been the major catalysts towards the inception of Pick a Piper?
I don't have too much history in making dance or electronic music, but at some point I realized all of the new music I was listening to was in that realm. So we decided, initially, to take this influence and create dance music out of purely acoustic instruments. The results were mixed but it got us off to a great start and propelled us to where we are today, which is mixing any and every type of sound that is inspiring or interesting to us and processing it the way you'd make electronic music. The ultimate goal is to create an output that sounds not like a specific influence or two, but like us.

What was the attractiveness to that realm of electronic dance music, you spoke of?
I remember one of the first times I tried to make a dance track with a 4-on-the-floor rhythm. I took something I was working on with an acoustic guitar and a generic almost-rock bassline. I threw a house beat over top and was perplexed as to why it didn't immediately make me want to move. It took me some time to learn how to craft rhythmic parts with every single element of the song. Be it the synth lead, chords, bass line, vocals, etc. Everything needs a complementary rhythm to everything else. This is obvious [to me] now, but at the time it took a bit to wrap my head around it. It's this constant rhythmic challenge that makes dance music really fun to make.

Why was your approach to make dance music solely with acoustic instruments when a majority of artists in this industry are using electronic instruments?
I was starting from what I knew. Previous bands I had been in were largely guitar based. One of my favourite bands from my early 20's used lots of wind instruments within this context, as well. So I figured writing dance music from an acoustic starting point would be a really interesting, yet somewhat familiar, challenge. I was also really into artists like Four Tet, Mum and The Books that did this really well. But I came into it from a house/techno perspective, since that's the first type of electronic music I heard as a teenager and still my favourite to date. But I didn't intend on writing music that was overly referential to all of the above. I was hoping to find my own voice within these constraints. While I enjoyed the challenge of sticking to acoustic instrumentation, I slowly found myself sampling weird synth sounds or trying to make acoustic sounds more electronic. At that point it made sense to open up the palette to a wide variety of acoustic and electronic sounds… basically whatever excites me at the time. That's still the framework I write within today.

What is on the horizon for Pick a Piper?
I'm deep into working on a new record, which I hope to release by the end of next year, if all goes well! There are a couple of other small releases on the way that I can't discuss yet, but keep your eyes peeled this fall and winter!

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You can follow Geoff on Twitter @gpharricks