The Peak

Piper Davis is addicting

By Deanne Beattie, Arts Editor

Piper Davis is addicting. I mean, her music is pretty catchy — electronic funk beats infected with her old soul voice bounce and swing, having the effect on a listener that you’d like to be swallowed up into it. Movement is imperative when you’re listening to a Piper Davis track; you must dance, or at least tap a foot. Beats pop, drums click and roll, and surprising sound samples puncture the groove. You’ll have her four-song EP on repeat — if you can get your hands on it — guaranteed. But more than that, this musician is so grounded, and so pure, and so intelligent about her music that you’d like to be swallowed up into her world a little bit, and you’d really, really like for her to do really well.

Vancouver musician and SFU alumna Piper Davis got her start in electronic music as a teenager. Davis moved from Vancouver to Calgary at age 14, abandoned her music lessons in guitar, piano, and violin, and began attending raves. She didn’t like electronic music at the time, she says — it was a way to meet people in a new place — but it became a way to get involved in music, and set her on the path to making some music of her own. She began singing for DJs at age 19, finding a vintage, feminine sound in face of the techno, future-forward sounds of the electronic music she accompanied. “Once I started singing,” said Davis, “I only wanted to listen to old soul records, because my voice came out like that — I related to that I guess.”

Davis found her way back to Vancouver via SFU and the music program in the School for Contemporary Arts. She attributes the innovative, experimental music program with giving her the skills to make her own music. “Of course,” she said, “When you’re in your program, you think ‘when am I ever going to use this? This is so impractical!’ […] But I realized that all that stuff was really important for my musical progression.” Exposed to music from around the world and taught to use computer programs for mixing music like ProTools at SFU, Davis was at last able to do her own thing. “It’s cool, because my musical ideas can come out just as they are. I don’t have to fight it out with four band mates.”

Today, Davis is working and performing actively. She’s collaborating with musicians like DJ Neighbour and producer Aniff Akinola, and working with a band of her own to put on live shows. Later this fall, she’s taking off to Europe to take part in the Red Bull Music Academy in Barcelona to learn and make music with other electronica musicians.

But as to where she goes from here? With music always on her mind, she says she just wants to keep doing what she’s doing. “I want to be successful,” she says, “And you’re successful as soon as you love what you do, and you enjoy the action of doing it.” She’ll produce her first full-length LP; she’ll tour and try to support herself with her music, and she’ll share her music with the world. “However that manifests itself in the world, however far it goes, is based on reception.

“But I’m pretty sure I’ll always make music, because I get antsy if I don’t.”