Piaz is Rotterdam musician Paul Fitzpatrick, love child of Irish immigrants. Piaz deftly melts electro and techno with 80’s synth and guitar pop to produce a simultaneously warm, melancholy, and exciting whole. Standard pop templates and dance clichés are broken through his use of compound measures and guitar themes based on classical music. Without straying into extraneous self-conscious complexities, the music gains depth and layers, reinforced by the artist’s minimal use of instruments and arrangements, leaving space for a wealth of subtle details. Early 2005 saw Piaz prepare a live set together with altruistic avant-gardist Bruno X (Stöma, Doodoo’s Coffee, a.o.). The combination of diverse electronics and guitar with bass and marimba proved golden during a recent tryout in Rotterdam’s Waterfront. The show, far from a gratuitous reproduction of the recording on a laptop, was an impressive live performance, improvising with structure and sound. Piaz’ debut EP Sonica was released in late 2004. He is at work now on a new repertoire that will be released as a first full-length album. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/PiaZ">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.