By Anthony Bromberg
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Just another band styling their hair and buying matching suits so they look original? No, no. Aliens having sex while they're depressed? Getting warmer. A sound that can be described as Space Porn Funk? Oh, yeah.
"That phrase came from one of our earliest and greatest fans," said Steve Molitz, Particle's keyboard player. "She coined it after having heard us play for the first time. At first she was at a loss for words, and all of a sudden, she was like, 'It's this space porn funk!' And it caught us all offguard, but it was also really fitting."
The band from which this unique genre of music originates is the Los Angeles instrumental outfit Particle. Particle is composed of four young men who, together on stage, create a high-energy layered sound infused with an abundance of musical genres. The boys have been touring regularly since their maiden gig in October of 2000, and this Thursday they will be sharing a little bit of Space Porn Funk, and the bill, with the popular '70s act War at the House of Blues in West Hollywood.
The members of Particle, the pioneers of Space Porn Funk themselves, are Darren Pujalet on drums, Eric Gould on bass, Charlie Hitchcock holding down lead guitar duties, and the aforementioned Molitz on the keys.
Particle belongs to the category of jam bands, a group characterized by the emphasis on instrumentation, and the ability to draw out songs for long periods of time. Particle prides itself on its diverse musicality and its aptitude for drawing on different influences to come up with a sound all its own. It doesn't want to be just another Phish or Grateful Dead, but cites influences ranging from acid jazz, to blues, to Europe's DJ scene, and even minimalist composers like Philip Glass.
"This started off as a funk-improv-meets-ambient-electronic-groove project," Gould said. "One of the things we love to do is intertwine style. We like to not know what's going to happen next."
The mindset of the band keys into an unpredictability that allows its songs to take on lives of their own.
"We never know where the song can go," Pujalet said. "A lot of times it can be a standard format; other times it'll completely breakaway. It can divert to anything. We really try to mix it up every night."
And as for that Space Porn Funk sound?
"It's something that manages to be down and dirty and gritty and make you want to shake your ass, but it's also something that has a flip side that's based in the more cerebral realms," Molitz said.
Particle got its name when the original members of the band noted that a particle can be something as big as a galaxy, while at the same time potentially being an invisible speck resting on a fingertip. The members of Particle say their sound is driven by the same expansive principles, with the potential to be anything, and incorporating a sonic eclecticism that fuses smoothly as many styles of particles as possible.
The biggest bump in this particle's journey was the death of its original guitarist, Dave Simmons, only two months after the band had started. Simmons was a lifelong diabetic. He did a lot to chart the course for Particle and help create the desire to keep moving forward musically, according to Molitz.
When improvising live, Particle often finds ways to insert little tributes to Simmons into the music, by throwing in a turn of phrase from a song he loved, or hated.
"In the middle of one of my solos, if I break into a Jimmy Buffet song we'll all crack up," Molitz said. "When we play songs he helped write or was influential on, we always think of him."
After New Years 2001, Particle regrouped and brought in Hitchcock to fill out the band, and in the past year the band has matured in sound and gained an audience it only wishes Simmons could see.
The centerpiece of the Particle musical experience - it hasn't released an album though the tentatively titled "Linear Accelerator" is in the works - is its live show. Its performances are centered around the energy of the monumental jams, and backed by projection art provided by Particle's pseudo-fifth member, Scott Mackinnon.
The projections include a live camera video feed, DVD footage, and computer- animated fractals, all displayed upon screens behind the band to accompany its music and enhance the audience's enjoyment. The band considers its shows a multimedia, multi-art format, with the projections as only the beginning of a form which continues to expand along with the music, creating an experience both the band and its fans can embrace.
"I think our biggest attribute is that we take people away at shows, and they're able to dance from beginning to end," Pujalet said.
This comes from the band's passion about communicating its music to people.
"We all are very expressive people naturally," Gould said. "We aren't necessarily going out there and doing theatrics like a Tenacious D sort of thing. What we do instead is just show our true colors. We just show our love of what we do with music and the energy that is shared with the audience. We'll mix electronica with the funk and groove and that'll create a really fine product, that will have people dancing, and really just gets the dancehall crowd, the rave crowd, the jam and funk crowd just going all together. It's a really nice blend."
The band is also notorious for its long sets, one of the most memorable shows being a gig in Las Vegas, where it performed four full sets starting around 10.
"Every time we thought we were playing our last song, they just wouldn't stop dancing, so we just kept playing and playing, so before we knew it the sun was up and we were still partying," Molitz said.
The fans are the driving force behind the whole Particle Space Porn Funk experience. Its fans are known as "particle people," and the band describes them as being adventurous, open in their musical tastes, and ready to celebrate life and lose themselves in the music. According to Gould, Particle is open to any form of audience; its music has a place for anyone with imagination, and all of this comes through at the band's potent live shows.
"When you come out to see Particle it's an adventure," Molitz said. "You're not just coming out to a club where you're gonna stand around; you're going to meet people. It's a whole community. You're going to leave that night with more friends than you came with, and that's a cool thing."
