It’s been two years since When Particles Collide riffed, ripped, and pounded their way through the Rock And Roll Rumble, wild-carding to the second round of play and twice winning over pretty much everyone in the room. The theme of that year’s Rumble, won by Goddamn Draculas, was “friendship”, and that attitude has carried on for the New England rock duo, who today release the video for new single “Fight”, a collaborative affair that reaches deep within the Boston music scene.
The single and video is the first taste of When Particles Collide’s new EP and collaborative project, Ecotone, set for release June 3 via Unstoppable Rock Records. The four songs, including “Fight”, were recorded by engineers Jonathan Wyman and Darren Elder at the Halo Studio in Windham, Maine, and co-written and developed by a team of collaborators from across the country, including Jen de la Osa and Henry Beguiristain of Aloud, Mad Anthony’s Ringo Jones, The Hat Madder’s Isaac Vander, and Wreck Loose’s Nathan Zoob (also of Zoob, obvi).
“It was scary to put our friends in charge of making production, songwriting, and arrangement decisions about our songs,” says When Particles Collide drummer Chris Viner. “We were worried that our collaborators would pile so many cool extra parts, layers, and instruments onto our songs that we wouldn’t be able to play them live. We were worried they would lose their WPC-ness. But we were blown away with how Jen, Henry, and everyone else on their individual songs helped us to bring our songwriting, performance and recorded work to a whole new level. Jen and Henry are such professionals, they hear things that we could not have imagined and have a keen sense about how to move a song forward, constantly propelling it forward. And just listen to those harmonies! What about Jen’s psychedelic guitar line? How about Henry’s rock solid, funky bass playing?”
As for the video, Viner says the clip “may seem like just a simple dancy, celebratory video of Sasha and [I] jumping around, but actually it is crafted so that there is a character/visual transformation that parallels the lyrical transformations in the song.” He adds: “The character is upset because she has let her partner take advantage of her good will to promote and grow his or her own endeavors and she has supplanted her own pursuits. But by the end of the song the character has begun to start claiming her place in this world. This is why the video starts in black and white with lots of shadow and gradually progresses with more color in the shots, ever increasingly colorful outfits and of course brighter and brighter lighting.”
The color extends to the stage next month with a pair of Ecotone release parties in New England before a tour across the country: the first show is at Portland House of Music and Events in Maine on June 3 (with Aloud, Rigor Samsa and Jargon Party), and the second goes down the following night at Great Scott in Allston (with Aloud, Eddie Japan, and The Digs).
Crawl into your screens with the Joshua Pickering-shot video below.
