Weed

Their name inspired by the poetic beauty of the Botanical Gardens in Geneva rather than the healing powers of “the herb”, Dan and Cristina Handrabur are WEED.

Dan Handrabur was born in Bucharest, Romania. The son of an Orthodox priest, history teacher and choral instructor he began classical music training at an early age. Even earlier, at two, he began a lifelong fascination with tape machines and loops when he discovered his father’s old Tesla reel-to- reel recorder and fed tape in backwards, letting it play in reverse. His mother used the same recorder to collect opera recordings from the radio. Dan recalls the distant transmissions of Radio Free Europe coming through distorted frequencies and the banter of cavalier western DJ’s sounding as if they were all run through a phaser. This was seminal to the training of Dan’s ear for music.

Cristina, a free spirit, obsessed with art, literature, poetry and languages, is from the same district of Bucharest as Dan, but the two never met until both their families fled the dangers of a Communist ruled Romania.

Granted a scholarship to study classical music theory at the Conservatoire in Geneva, Dan sought music everywhere and an inquisitive mind soon led him to a local DJ who would sneak him into clubs. Shortly after, Dan started DJ’ing himself at the landmark Club 58 and earned his first set of Technics 1200 turntables to practice with. Still too young to legally gain entry into such a club, he would talk his way in whenever he had the chance to play.

After fleeing Romania, Cristina had moved with her family to Geneva and began studying languages at the same college as Dan. Drawn to each other via a love of the sounds the two were destined to share – a mixture of 80’s electronic and symphonic pop, futuristic film scores like “Bladerunner”, and the jazz noir of Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock’s “Mwandishi” period – she began experimenting with music herself. Blessed with a distinctive, highly unusual voice, she knew that this too might have its place in any musical collaboration the two might make together.

Following the completion of his studies, Dan moved with his family to Toronto, Canada. Just under a year later, shortly after her 18th birthday, Cristina joined him and the two were married.

Dan was already studying sound recording in Ontario and soon felt that his technical skills actually exceeded those being taught in the local colleges. In search of new inspiration he and Cristina moved to Vancouver, where they quickly became known among a new electronic music community that had grown out of a shared love of Detroit/European techno and UK post-rave acts such as Orbital, Massive Attack and Portishead rather than the harsher industrial electronic sounds that the city is more readily associated with. In 1997, the Vancouver-based label Nettwerk Productions, impressed with the purity of the sounds they were hearing on the duo’s very first demo, signed the band, and they set to work completing their debut album, “Hard To Kill”.

WEED encapsulates the individualistic musical approach that Dan and Cristina have pursued since moving to Canada. Although much of the album is song-based, replete with chilled-out and electro-funk rhythms overlaid with sweeping synthesizer sounds and the sensual voice of Cristina (“Hit And Miss”, “Hard To Kill”) they are not afraid to delve into the avant-garde world of much of Dan’s training and present the occasional semi-abstract electronic/vocal collage Extra- Planetary”) just to keep things even more interesting. “If Only You Could See” is a frenetic, almost progressive trance-like song that is just one of many highlights from their debut album.

Plans are underway for WEED to tour following the release of “Hard To Kill” in the early spring of 1999. Remixes appear on a special DJ-promo 12″ just prior to this.

WEED is the product of Dan and Cristina’s determination and vision. Nettwerk is proud to plant the first seed.