Fans of particle physics and experimental noise-rock rejoice!

Deerhoof have played a show at the Large Hadron Collider, the massive underground tunnel in central Europe that’s being used to prove the existence, or otherwise, of the Higgs boson particle.

The band were invited to battle with the noise of CERN’s magnet test facilities by ATLAS physicist James Beacham, whose pilot project Ex/Noise/CERN “collides experimental music artists with experimental particle physics”.

“Ex/Noise/CERN is about exploring the unknown,” said Beacham. “During Run 2 of the LHC, we’re not sure what we’ll find — extra Higgs bosons, dark matter, cracks in the Standard Model — and when we brought Deerhoof to CERN, we weren’t sure what they’d do in SM-18. But like the best scientists, they were curious, daring and embraced the unknown — with spectacular results.”

He added: “Musical curiosity is similar to scientific curiosity and, on a personal level, Deerhoof has inspired me as much as Einstein. They’re explorers and this sense of exploration is what you feel in the air at CERN right now, and so the pairing of Deerhoof and CERN was natural.”

Wonderful. Find out more about the project and watch the gig above. [via Pitchfork]