|
Particle knocked my socks off at their recent show at 1650 in Hollywood. I’m still recovering from dancing my ass off as a matter of fact. The show was well attended and included a contingent of friends and family (literally and figuratively) which the band acknowledged at the beginning of a blistering first set. Steve Molitz went nutz on his Moog and was making all sorts of wiggling and wobbling noises that basically drove the crowd out of it’s mind. Molitz further entertained us with his funky dancing and oddball antics as he was clearly in the zone. As Charlie Hitchcock shredded the crowd’s face with riffs from hell (as in hot), Molitz would counter with some nice keyboard riffs occasionally creating synthesized modulations that took on lives of their own.
Eric Gould and Darren Pujalet were smiling from ear to ear and fairly animated as they created a plethora of grooves for Hitchcock and Molitz to improvise on.
Projectionist Scott MacKinnon was the icing on the cake. Tantalizing the audience with psychedelic images of all shapes and sizes, MacKinnon’s visual extravaganza created the perfect setting for the evening’s festivities (I was being festive anyway).
The highlight of the first set was during “Windjammer” and “Launchpad” when Rob Covacevich (sax) and John Harrington (trumpet) of Delta Nove got up on stage and blasted the crowd with some horny improv. Kicking off the first set was “Metropolis” followed by “Roads a breeze at 3am”.
During the set break, I met Steve Molitz’ Dad and spoke “highly” of his son. Needless to say, he was justifiably proud of his little boy, all grown up and kicking people’s asses with funky keyboard riffs.
Still buzzing from the end of the first set, Particle opened up the set with “7 minutes till Radio Darkness” followed by an abridged version of “Elevator”. Then it got interesting. As Jam Base promoter Eric Koral put it “Particle freaks out and plays a ton of new shit”. They broke out several new tunes which meandered into some floydian territory (floydian slip?...couldn’t resist) and tossed in some sick funk rock for good measure. Their first new tune was a little slower and featured Molitz on voice box. This was followed up with another precious new gem that was rumored to be called “Uhura”. Not true. According to Hitchcock it will either be called “Make it Real” or “Do You Better”. Capping off the trio was an experimental and floydesque ditty called “Trapezoid”. They ended up the set with a sweet version of “Other Desert Cities” which ended with only Molitz and Hitchcock onstage fading…fading…fading.
All, I can say about the second set is that somehow Particle managed to turn it up a notch when it seemed like it was on 10 already. So, in a nutshell…you’ll most likely find a nut.
Michael Allen Howard
JamBase | So-Cal
Go See Live Music!
| 
