Shannon Myers
Arts Writer

It’s not often that you meet someone who is intelligent and motivated enough to go to med school. It’s even rarer to meet someone choosing music over medicine.

Such is the case with Paul Kuzbik, who recently joined forces with former Sturgis Trash members Chris Maczek and Everett Berg to form the sonic trio Higgs Bozon.

Kuzbik was about to call it quits on the music front after finding himself in a place where he was no longer happy with it.

“I needed to break the mold and woodshed, and I almost quit performing. But then all these other things happened;” he explained of his near abandonment of music, and the subsequent year off that he spent redefining his sound.

Kuzbik started volunteering at City Hospital, playing for patients in the downstairs lounge — a change of scenery that provided the opportunity for his music to make a difference in someone’s day. At the same time, he was working at Underdog Music where he met Paul Tobin.

The two Pauls played the Ness Creek Music Festival together and things continued to pick up as Kuzbik jammed with Maczek. No one clicked with the two quite like Berg did when he returned from Japan, and the trio was officially formed last November.

Growing up together, Maczek and Berg had formed an earlier band. As a result, their on-stage chemistry is undeniable as they feed off each other, creating limitless but well-structured pockets for Kuzbik to fill with cerebral cascades of electric wailing.

“Our sound is modern and electronic with a lot of effects and really progressive songs, but there’s an old school vibe as well,” described Kuzbik. “It’s not processed beats; it’s definitely three guys plugged in, playing loud together.”

“Our sound is modern and electronic with a lot of effects and really progressive songs, but there’s an old school vibe as well”
—Paul Kuzbik

The music bug began to grow anew in Kuzbik and he became involved with more musical outlets. He’s now in the Ne’er Do Wells* with locals Kamila Martel, Megan Lane, Teegan Jeffers, Eliza Doyle and Finn Day-Wiggins; a lounge and dub band with Day-Wiggins and the Gaff; and has found the inspiration to work on his solo stuff again.

“It’s exciting because I don’t really have an idea anymore of what I want my career to be. I just want to play stuff that interests me, and Higgs Bozon is a challenge for sure,” said Kuzbik. “It’s fun. I never know what’s going to happen and I’m always really sweaty when it’s done.”

The Higgs boson, literally, is a hypothesised particle that would explain the origin of mass in the universe if ever observed. So how, then, does this tie into the band? Are they evasive and mysterious, yet powerfully important?

“The correlation is more the unknown elements in our music and not having a preconceived idea of what’s going to happen,” Kuzbik explains. “I think it’s the part of our band that drives us the most and is what we most embrace.”

It’s a spontaneity that is expressed in the experimental feel of the music and leads to different experiences with each performance. Whatever direction the compass is pointed, the energy is full throttle and there’s no looking back.

Photo Shannon Myers

* EDIT: The article originally stated that Paul Kuzbik played in the band Mirror Duo. This has been corrected.