A flagship artist from Montréal’s electronic music scene since the late nineties, Jean-Patrice Rémillard (PHEEK) has racked up an impressive discography—on top of founding his own acclaimed label Archipel , through which he has advanced many fledgling talents. A gifted engineer as well, Rémillard has worked in sound and design for a number of years and owns and operates his own audio services business.
JP became interested in acid house in the late ’80s and raves in early ’90s, inspiring him to DJ his own radio shows in Sherbrooke, Québec. From his college years to university, he played techno, house and anything exciting to people whose ears weren’t as close to the ground.
Upon moving to Montreal in 1997 to study computer science, JP met Mateo Murphy and found they shared similar musical interests. After performing a show with Gez Varley, Mateo and JP decided to work on a live concept of their own, based on improvising beats on the fly and mixing in other synthesized sonic textures.
It was at this point that JP adopted the name of Pheek after a Richie Hawtin/Plastikman performance at Medialounge, a show that would forever change his perspective on music.
After further honing their live show together, Pheek and Mateo opened for Chain Reaction at the FCMM in 1999. They were spotted by Hautec and offered to release a 12″, marking a turning point in their fledgling careers.
The few years that followed saw proposed releases on Hybrid Structure and collaborations with Mitchell Akiyama on various projects – a creative period that proved a catalyst for JP’s later success.
The next pivotal point in Pheek’s career was meeting Éloi Brunelle and subsequently being invited to join to the Epsilonlab media collective. JP played with them since the very first night of their existence and for almost every show to follow. His first release for Epsilonlab, 2002’s Paysages Matriciels, was a critical success and was nominated for Quebec’s prestigious ADISQ music awards.
Another milestone was the label Minus who noticed Pheek’s demo and Richie Hawtin who started playing his music along with Magda. That kind of feedback from major DJ made him move forward in his production. Then he got in contact with labels such as Contexterrior and Telegraph with who he released some material.