Dax Pierson, experimental hip-hop and electronic musician, dies aged 54

American experimental electronic and hip-hop musician Dax Pierson has died.

California label Dark Entries, who released the Oakland artist’s 2021 album ‘Nerve Bumps (A Queer Divine Dissatisfaction)’ with Ratskin Records, shared the news on social media on Tuesday, 31st December. No immediate cause of death has been disclosed at the time of writing. He was 54. 

Pierson had shared an update on his health in September 2024, when he had to cancel a performance due to ongoing, long-term health problems related to his life in a wheelchair. 

Dax Pierson’s music career began as a co-founder of Bay Area collectives Subtle and 13 & God, as well as a Themselves and Anticon affiliate, where his instruments of choice were keyboard, autoharp and Roland SP-303/404. In 2005, he was paralysed from the chest down in a devastating car accident with his leftfield hip-hop band Subtle, and the use of his fingers was severely impacted, affecting his ability to produce music. Years later, the development f iPad apps and laptop controllers enabled him to make music again. In 2021, he released his first solo album, ‘Nerve Bumps (A Queer Divine Dissatisfaction)’, which followed his 2019 improvisational live release, ‘Live In Oakland‘, for Ratskin Records.

“When my body was adjusting to being paralysed, there was a lot of random muscular activity”, Pierson told Marke Biescke in a 2021 interview for with DJ Mag. “Spasms would fire off in my legs and I would get goosebumps. One time I accidentally said ‘nerve bumps’ and it became a little joke between my partner and I… And maybe it’s a play on ‘bumping’ as well, as in, if something’s going hard, it’s bumping, it’s banging. These tracks are all bangers from a spinal cord injury point of view.”

Revisit Biescke’s in-depth feature in which Dax Pierson talks about living and making music as a queer, Black, disabled artist here, and listen to ‘Nerve Bumps (A Queer Divine Dissatisfaction)’ below.