You know you're probably doing something right when you start a band and you get too busy with live work, more or less immediately, to actually get around to making a proper CD. Memphis-based Pnuma Trio, hailed by some observers of the blipgroove scene as the vanguard of the Next Wave, seems to have found themselves in that zone.

"It's really the first CD we've done apart from the demo we did when we first got started," says keyboardist Ben Hazlegrove of the band's recently released Live From Out There offering. "It's a collection of live tracks that pretty much came from the first few months that we were playing as a band... We've developed a long way since then."

Having spent most of the past two years on the road, working the major festivals and solo marquee gigs, we wondered how the band has changed. As good as the live CD is—and it's pretty good—there's a lot that suggests different directions for a young band just finding its legs. Rattletrap electro textures, luscious space porn excursions, smoove skipping neo-fusion grooves, dnb stomp dissolving into with cosmic chaos... all seem within the band's easy and almost seamless reach, approaching the deceptively elusive symbiosis of house and jam.

"I'd say, we're probably getting deeper into computer-generated stuff, more electronic. Trance, hip hop, house—it's equal for all parts of the music, it's just making them all fit together," says Hazlegrove.

So, the unspoken reality of playing instrumental, heavily-groove and improvisation-dependent music is that sooner or later you have to develop and promote some substance in the tunes themselves. With enough vibe and cold beer, you can feed an audience two bar hooks and spitting disco high hat until last call, keep the dance floor packed and the guy at the door counting, but as Hazlegrove points out, eventually you have to make yourself happy as well.

"I'd say we're definitely trying to mature the music. The thing about the jam scene, I think, is that you're never going to be really big until you're doing something that keeps you interested. You have to find a way to do that," he says. "The road can be hard. Sometimes I think people don't realize. The crowd is there with different expectations. You can have an off night; you can have a really good night. The thing is, the scene is still really young. People are trying all kinds of different things. Some of them work, some of them don't. When you're out for a long period of time, it can be kind of random."

The studio isn't too far off for the band, though. Hazlegrove, who packs some formidable chops and points to old-school masters like Herbie Hancock and Theolonius Monk, as well as modern synth players like Paul Van Dyk and Paul Oakenfold as fundamental influences, says they're eager to get in and put something down for serious. The band's current run takes them through mid-December, then an appearance at String Cheese's annual Sea of Dreams New Year's gig in San Francisco, then some time off.

As far as facing the dilemma of recreating the live thing in the studio, Hazlegrove waves it off, trying not to handicap the band's prospects in the padded room.

"It's different for every band. You can't just take the best live gig and reproduce it in the studio," he says. "You can't go in there and make the best live record in the studio, or go out and just reproduce your CD live. I think you have to go and make something that pleases yourself. Ultimately, that's how you get people to accept what you're doing."

On the Bill

Pnuma Trio plays with Ryan Burnett of Signal Path, Bassnectar and KJSawka at 9 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 2, at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder, 303-443-3399.

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