Swimming against the current and streaming out of the night clubs and bars of Chicago, the body of water known as Liquid Soul has spent the past four years gathering momentum and developing a musical style like no other.

And if Mars Williams, saxophonist and mastermind of the genre-defying group has anything to say about it, there won’t be much more time before the flood.

In the simplest of terms, Liquid soul is a band.

What kind of a band it is — now that’s debatable.

But when the group plays in Des Moines tonight, the type of music it will play is no object. All that matters to Williams is putting on a high-energy, interactive and entertaining show.

He and his band shy away from labeling their style, instead electing to play music in its purest form — without boundaries.

“We haven’t put any barriers on our sound or where we go with it. No matter what we throw out there, it will still be Liquid Soul,” Williams said. “Everyone has their own individual musical personalities, and that’s what this band is about. I don’t think about a style when I do it. Music is music.”

The 10-piece group derives music from a mammoth of a list including hip-hop, jazz, soul, funk, Latin, R&B, avant garde, mid-eastern and world music. The band is made up of one saxophonist, a rapper/MC, two percussionists, a trombone player, a bassist, guitarist, DJ and a vocalist.

While many have taken the easy route by calling Liquid Soul “acid jazz,” Williams stressed that this definition does not do any justice for their music.

“We do that but we go beyond that and add everything from funk and R&B to eastern rhythms, whatever feels right at the moment,” Williams explained. “When we do a song with a Latin flavor, it’s not a Latin song. No matter what we do it sounds like Liquid Soul.”

The band got its start playing weekly Sunday night jams at a club called The Elbo Room in Chicago. Since its start, it has played nearly every Sunday evening for the past four years.

“We started doing freestyle jams and seeing people’s reactions and seeing smiles on people’s faces and dancing, they’re the ones that encourage us to keep it going,” he said.

In fact, the group is so dedicated that in the past year, Liquid Soul has only missed a total of five jams, Williams said.

“Just last week in Seattle [on a Saturday night], we finished a show at 2 a.m., rushed to the airport for a 6 a.m. flight back to Chicago,” he said. “At times it’s hard, but we want to do it.”

As its popularity has grown, Liquid Soul has since graduated to a larger venue, now playing its Sunday evening explorations at Chicago’s renowned Double Door.

Because of its diverse sound, Liquid Soul draws an audience with all races, age groups and overall kinds of people represented.

“People may be there to hear different things, but they all leave the show feeling good,” Williams said. “The audience is really a big part of our show. The energy they throw at us, we throw back at them.”

In a music industry full of like-minded and like-sounding bands, Liquid Soul has had to deal with the challenge of finding exactly where it fits in.

“It’s hard to label us, which is why it’s hard for us to get a lot of radio play because we don’t fit into a niche,” Williams said.

But not to worry, “Make Some Noise,” Liquid Soul’s recently-released second album has already generated a national buzz, selling 25,000 copies since the May of 1998.

“People now are really open minded and they’re looking for something new, something different that’s not the same damn 10 songs played over and over again on the radio,” Williams explained.

Liquid Soul definitely doesn’t sound like anything heard on the radio. If anything, one could say the band sounds like everything.

The unpredictable nature of Liquid Soul’s sound has even led to some unique and unusual occurrences at shows.

“Last weekend a girl jumped on stage with a big, giant stuffed penis,” Williams said laughing. “She stage dove into the crowd with a big, giant penis in her hand.”

Male genitalia aside, while Williams couldn’t promise anything as unusual as what happened last weekend to happen tonight, he does promise that the band will put on an entertaining show.

The flood is coming … watch out.

Liquid Soul will play tonight at 9 p.m. at the Olmsted Center of Drake University in Des Moines. Tickets can be purchased for $5 at the door.