Now that Clay and Brandon are in the band, are there going to be any major stylistic changes on the new album or is it going to maintain the Particle vibe that we’ve become familiar with?

I think the Particle vibe is definitely there, and will always be there. It really is the core of who and what we are. I would say the foundation is still there, that classic Particle sound is definitely still there. But I think there’s also an evolution that’s happened, which is really exciting and refreshing because these musicians have a slightly different set of colors on their palette. They’re able to color the songs with different feelings and nuances than you might have heard from Particle in years past. So it’s sort of an expanded, evolved sound, but definitely building on the same foundation.

When people ask what kind of music we play, I still say it’s high energy dance music mixed with funk and rock and electronic dance music. So the foundations are definitely there, but the songwriting has expanded and evolved. I think maybe about half the songs we’ve written have lyrics, so that’s a new and exciting thing for us. I feel like the structure of the instrumental songs has kind of opened up and they are able to breathe a little bit more than some of our earlier material. When we were younger, our songwriting was really turbo-charged and relentless, and we still absolutely have songs that are like that, these kind of upper-cut songs that are just a total blast of energy from top to bottom. While we definitely still have those songs, we’ve all also matured as players. For every couple songs we write like that, we want to write two or three where it’s maybe a more laid-back tempo or patient song structure, or maybe shorter melodies and shorter solos and more focus on the group dynamic than individual soloing. So it’s been really fun just to write together and let the sound of this new lineup come together organically and naturally. It’s been really cool to get into the studio, hit record, jam on some different melodies and chord structures, and sort of let the songs shape themselves rather than trying to force something to be what you think it should be.

It really feels authentic and inspiring. The way I like to think of it is it’s like we’re digging for buried treasure together. That goes for the studio and the live setting, but especially the live setting. When you’re taking risks, as so many jambands do, and you’re out there without a net, and you’re sort of deep into uncharted territory, where you’re allowing 5 or 10 minutes for an instrumental section to blossom—the musicians are being really patient, the fans are being really patient, and everybody’s just allowing this process to take place and it’s really a beautiful thing. In those moments I always feel like we’re kind of digging for buried treasure. Some nights you strike gold, and some nights you don’t. But when you do, it just makes the digging so worth it. That feeling, metaphorically speaking, when the shovel hits the treasure chest. It’s seven minutes into some jam and you guys are all just looking at each other like, “Wow, we’ve never been here before, this is pretty cool,” and then everything comes together, and everyone’s in that moment. The band can experience it in real time, and you can just see the expressions on the musicians’ faces that they’re experiencing this thing for the first time, and it’s exciting to them. That’s kind of the zone we strive for every night, to be in the moment and try to get to new places every night within the same song structure and within that classic Particle sound you were talking about a minute ago. It’s been really fun to kind of hop out on tour with these guys and kind of dig for treasure. Some nights you find it, and some nights you don’t, but as long as you keep searching, I think that’s what it’s all about.

You mentioned that some of the songs on the new album are going to have more singing. What made you guys decide to go with that?

We’ve written songs over the years that have had vocals. We started writing songs with lyrics in about 2005, just in different songs. It’s probably been maybe 5 or 10 songs that we’ve written that have had lyrics since 2005. So it’s not necessarily that it’s a totally new thing for us, it’s just that within a normal Particle set you might get 80 percent of the songs are instrumental, and 20 percent have vocals. Now, as we’re pursuing more vocal-driven songs, that ratio may change to be a little more balanced between instrumental and vocal-driven songs. Granted, a lot of the songs with vocals will still have open-ended improvisational sections. It wasn’t really something we set out to do. It wasn’t a contrived decision, it was really just trying to serve the song.

It’s been the kind of thing where we’ve just approached each song as its own entity and sometimes the song steers you in a certain direction and you just get a sense of what it needs. So there were some songs that we wrote where once the grooves and the melodies were all in place and the chord changes and the song structure, we’d listen back to it and said “Wow, that feels done to us. Let’s just leave that one instrumental, it seems like it’s great the way it is.” And then there were others where we would listen back and think, “Wow, this section right here would be great if it had a verse,” and someone would improvise some words or hum a melody. And everybody kind of had the same feeling about it. “Yeah, that’s what I was hearing, that’s what I was thinking, too, let’s put something like that down.” So we didn’t really have any rules as to whether or not we were trying to write an all instrumental album or all songs with vocals, it really was a song-by-song thing where we just tried to stay open-minded and serve the song, and sort of let the music inform whether or not it needed lyrics or not.

It’s been a great process in that way, and ultimately we kind of love it all. We all love playing songs that are these 15 minute, high-energy dance epics that go through all these peaks and valleys and have tons of improvisation and kind of driving rhythms and big soaring melodies and that we can kind of ride these big waves of dynamic changes. We love that, but we all are just as interested in kind of playing rock songs that follow more standard arrangements. I mean, when I look back at some of the songs we were covering on this tour, we were covering the Beck song “E-Pro,” Radiohead’s “National Anthem,” Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar.” Those are all songs that are vocally driven, but then we would open them up to have these big improvisational sections, so a song like “Have a Cigar” might be 15 minutes on a given night, whereas on the album it’s probably 5 minutes. So even on the material where we are incorporating lyrics, sometimes the songs end up being a 4-minute tight rock song, and other times there are lyrics but it ends up opening up into a sort of epic narrative saga where the lyrics are just one part of the story that’s being told, but the music and the melodies are also adding to the story. We’re really not trying to impose too many rules on ourselves.

We recently posted an interesting story about you teaming up with Shaquille O’Neal to score a video game. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

I contributed on a number of different levels to video games over the years. The first thing I did was I wrote a couple songs for a game called Scarface: The World is Yours that Universal put out. It must have been in 2005 or 2006. And one of the songs, “American Dream,” was recorded by Particle and featured in the game. And then there was another song I did where I took Giorgio Moroder’s score from Scarface and kind of remixed it, and did a mashup with Blondie’s song “Rush Rush.” So I kind of did my own thing, and Particle also did some songs for Scarface. And since then I’ve worked on a handful of other games.

I spent a lot of 2012 working on an original game that was being created by the film director Gore Verbinski, who did Pirates of the Caribbean and Rango and most recently The Lone Ranger. So I worked with Gore and an amazing development team out in LA for most of 2012 as the lead composer for that project and probably wrote two hours of music, so it was a really in-depth project.

Last year I scored a game called R.I.P.D., it was later made into a movie that came out last year. And the company that put out R.I.P.D. is teaming up with Shaq to put out this game Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn. So when it came time for them to make the game, they gave me a call and just basically said, “Hey, we’d like to put you in a room with Shaq and see what happens.” “Oh, alright.” So we got together, and we really just had a great time and hit it off creatively right away. We both grew up listening to a lot of the same hip-hop and rap, so there’s a lot of common ground there. He’s really an incredibly creative and talented guy. He’s just an endless source of inspiration and ideas. So he’s constantly brainstorming and throwing out a bunch of great ideas and we were able to connect creatively pretty quickly.

I also did some music for a trailer that this incredible game company put together. The company’s called Big Deez Productions. They’re out of New Jersey, and they’ve worked on all kinds of different games, Halo games, and Street Fighter, all kinds of different projects. Shaq and the game developer are putting up a bunch of their own money, but they’re also running an Indiegogo campaign for the game to sort of get fans involved and to open the thing up to people. There are all kinds of creative things you can do with the rewards where you can be the voice of one of the characters in the game, or you can help design kung fu moves or something. Honestly it’s really, it’s a lot of fun and it’s not the kind of thing that’s meant to be too heavy-handed. Shaq’s a really fun guy and has a great sense of humor. I think the game is going to be a lot of fun, and I think the creative process will be a lot of fun as well. So definitely keep your eye out for that as it shapes up or check out the Indiegogo page and you can kind of get a better sense of it. We’ll have to see how it all shapes up, but I think I’ll probably be writing some beats for Shaq, and maybe he’ll be laughing or we’ll get some other special guests in there. We’ll have to see how it all shapes up, but it’ll be fun and exciting. If you want to hear what happens when you put the Particle keyboard player with Shaquille O’Neal…(Laughs)….I guess you’ve got to visit the Indiegogo page.

What’s in store for you and for Particle in the future? When can we expect that new album?

We’re working on it every day whenever we’re not on the road. We’ve got this great 24-city tour coming up that spans over a month. It starts in Lake Tahoe and ends at Jazz Fest with a Late Night in New Orleans. So really whenever we’re off the road we’re just working on finishing it up. We may put the album out all at once, or we may put it out in two parts just to try to get the music out there as quickly as possible. As the first five or six songs are ready, we may just release those and then release the next five or six later. We’ll have to see, but the new music will definitely be out as soon as possible.

What’s next for us is really just trying to be in the moment and take each show and each day as it comes. We’re trying not to get too far ahead of ourselves. But we’ve discovered that we’re just having such a great time at these shows, so there’s a real passion and motivation to keep playing together and to keep pushing forward. You can definitely expect to see Particle touring and putting out the new albums. We definitely have a lot of exciting stuff to announce in the coming weeks. So you can check out particlepeople.com or Facebook and Twitter for the latest info. There’s some really cool stuff we have in the works right now. It really just feels great to be back on tour with Particle, connecting with this music, and with this amazing band and with the fans, most importantly. We’re looking forward to a great year.

I guess the only other thing I would say is that we’re traveling with a lighting designer. He’s from Minneapolis so he’s teamed up with Atmosphere and PROF and that whole thing out in the Twin Cities. So we’re really happy to have him on the road, and he is taking a custom light package out on the whole tour. That will only continue to build and expand as the tours go by. We’ve always loved incorporating multimedia into our live show. Back in the day we used to travel with a projectionist, and then that became lights, and now it’s these lights. I could see it evolving to some other ideas that we’ve been throwing around for the future as well—incorporating more stage design and interactive multimedia. That’s something else that fans can look forward to.

We’re also really excited to be capturing multitrack recordings of all the shows on our upcoming spring tour. If you check out our website in the coming weeks, there’ll be announcements about how those shows are going to be released. We’re really excited to be getting multitracks of all the shows that we play. Aside from that, we’re just really looking forward to playing a bunch of new material. It’s been a long time coming. I’ve really wanted to write new songs and really forge new ground in Particle for a long time now. Now the stars have finally aligned, and that time has finally come. I’m really just very excited for this new phase in the band’s evolution and we’re just having a blast and looking forward to it.

Pages:« Previous Page