Clipping. brings experimental rap to Calgary as Sled Island's curator

When William Hutson, Jonathan Snipes, and Daveed Diggs first came together as clipping., they were a band in search of a scene.

It made sense. Hutson made harsh noise and free improvisation. Snipes worked in electronic dance music and pop. Diggs was a rapper and Tony-winning actor. On paper, the three had nothing in common. But as friends, they had everything in common — a shared appetite for pushing boundaries and a willingness to sound like nobody else.

"The impetus for starting as a band had more to do with the three of us being really close friends," Hutson said in a Zoom interview. "We did a lot together, and we spent a lot of time talking about music, and we thought we would have a really good time on the road. We started figuring out what the band would sound like after we had already decided to be a band."

What emerged was experimental hip-hop wrapped in horrorcore, industrial, and noise-rap — broad concept albums leaning heavily on sci-fi. For over a decade, clipping. has been the unlikely thing: a band finding its peers by refusing to sound like anyone.

That philosophy — the belief that weird, uncompromising work finds its audience — is now shaping this year's Sled Island Arts and Music Festival. The trio was asked to serve as guest curators, following an eclectic roster that includes Japanese garage-rockers Otoboke Beaver, post-hardcore New Yorkers Show Me the Body, Wire vocalist Colin Newman, boygenius singer-songwriter Julien Baker, and Flying Lotus.

Clipping.'s curatorial instinct was to program artists who don't sound like them but share a sensibility. Eight experimental acts fill the lineup, including Australia's Granpa (Luca Abela), a free jazz-inspired performer who bleeds himself during performances based on blowing shards of amplified glass. Also on the bill: New York underground hip-hop icon billy woods, Montreal's Zambian music-influenced industrial rapper Backxwash, and Brooklyn's improv synth-sound artist.

"The type of people who we programmed for this definitely don't sound anything like us, but have a similar sensibility," Hutson said. "I think they don't sound anything like each other, at least on the rap side of things."

For Hutson and clipping., the last 13 years have been a journey toward finding community. Hip-hop itself has shifted to accommodate stranger voices.

"Rap has gotten weirder in the last 15 years, and we have found a lot of weirder rappers," Hutson said.

That evolution — the normalization of experimental voices in a genre once defined by tighter constraints — is what makes a festival like Sled Island's clipping.-curated lineup possible. A decade ago, these eight artists might have been scattered across different scenes with no common thread. Now, they're the festival's beating heart.

Sled Island runs through the summer, with clipping.'s programming representing a statement about what Calgary's music culture can amplify and celebrate. It's not a statement in words. It's a statement in sound — eight artists saying what Hutson, Snipes, and Diggs have been saying all along: weird is the point.