On Leap of Faith: "Alien yet familiar, bizarre yet completely fascinating. Expanding, contracting, erupting, settling down, always as one force..." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
2
Composer and multi-instrumentalist, PEK, set his sights on something bigger with the Leap of Faith Orchestra's Supernovae. The previous incarnation of the LOFO expands from the fifteen musicians on The Expanding Universe (Evil Clown, 2016) to twenty-one players on this new outing. Another noteworthy element of this project is PEK's use of Frame Notation where the score is seen in written descriptions and straight-forward symbols within Duration Bars. The system provides the musicians with immediate understanding of their own parts and the higher-level arrangement of the music.
Supernovae consists of a single track composition running just under eighty minutes. The digital download includes a bonus track. Though the extended piece is not broken out by formal movements, there are clear delineations within the score. PEK's ensemble—not surprisingly—includes enough non-traditional and weird instruments to compete with a Dr. Seuss orchestra. Though they are not playing in a vacuum, that group of instruments dominates the first ten minutes before strings and reeds make themselves more clearly heard. Forty-five minutes in, we have the first case of prolonged melody, darker and more subdued than the overall tone of the first half.
Supernovae gives way to free improvisation overlaying the melody. Eventually the piece introduces a brilliant percussion passage before it reintroduces the non-traditional music elements, but here in a more refined manner. As with all of PEK's compositions, there is—behind the scenes—a painstaking amount of organization that is not always evident in the listening. That is part of the beauty of this album; the non-traditional approach to instrumentation and the lack of adherence to Western structure continue to make the various iterations of Leap of Faith consistently interesting. And interesting look at the written score can be viewed at http://www.evilclown.rocks/lofo-supernovae-score.html.
Audio CD Evil Clown 9329
Axioms - Abstract Intensions
streaming, downloads and CD mail Order
1) Overture - 4:07
2) Abstract Intensions - 1:10:46
Livestreamed to YouTube from
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
21 February 2023
Jane SpokenWord - poetry, spoken word, Tibetan bowls, gong
PEK - cclarinet, contralto & contrabass clarinets, alto, tenor & bass saxophones, bass flute, guqin, nagoya, [d]ronin, 17 string bass, spring & chime rod boxes, theremin with moogerfooger, log drums, spiral crash, orchestral anvils, bowed cymbal, electric chimes, wood blocks, gongs, plate gong, crotales, glockenspiel, brontosaurus & tank bells, orchestral chimes, Tibetan bowls, xylophone, balafon, almglocken, Englephone, danmo, cymbal, chimes, theremin with moogerfooger, prophet, novation peak, moog subsequent, syntrx, ms-20, nord stage 3, Linnstrument controllers, voice
Glynis Lomon - cello, aquasonic, voice
Albey onBass - . Albey OnBass - fretless bass guitar, gongs, plate gong, brontosaurus bell, log drums, voice
Joel Simches - live to 2-track recording, real-time signal processing
Excerpt from PEK Liner Notes:
“… This is the first Axioms set since the studio upgrades have been finished at Evil Clown. With only 4 performers and no drum set, there was much more room than we had in the old studio space. We were able to set up in a circle facing each other, with the auxiliary instruments mounted to the walls around the perimeter. The new space is really fantastic, and I think the excitement of our first performance in the new space really shines through…”
Axioms - Abstract Intensions
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA - 21 February 2023
PEK Liner Notes
Albey onBass and Jane SpokenWord were associated with Cecil Taylor's final trio. Following Cecil's passing they were in Boston for about a year in 2017-2018 and Albey performed a dozen or so times with Leap of Faith, Metal Chaos Ensemble and Turbulence. In November 2018, Albey and I had been discussing doing a duet, but we decided to include Jane’s poetry as a trio. This new Evil Clown Ensemble we called Axioms, which to me is an apt name for a band which features words - something that most Evil Clown sessions do not.
There are two definitions:
1) a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true
2) a statement or proposition on which an abstractly defined structure is based (mathematics)
These two meanings bridge the distance between poetic discussion of truths and abstract musical structures.
A few months later, about a year before the virus, Albey and Jane moved to New Orleans, so the original session from December 2018, Manifestations, had been our only recording to date.
In July of 2021, Albey and Jane returned to the Northeast, splitting their time between New York and Boston. Albey has performed since then with many Evil Clown Ensembles, and this newest Axioms recording is the 7th set. Glynis Lomon, cellist from Leap of Faith has been on most of the newer Axioms recordings, so the most common unit is quartet.
Axioms is fundamentally different from the other Evil Clown Ensembles since it features Jane’s poetry – Jane and Albey have performed many times together along with many notable players from the free improvisation scene. So, Axioms is really the Evil Clown setting for Jane and Albey’s ongoing poetry project.
This is the first Axioms set since the studio upgrades have been finished at Evil Clown. With only 4 performers and no drum set, there was much more room than we had in the old studio space. We were able to set up in a circle facing each other, with the auxiliary instruments mounted to the walls around the perimeter. The new space is really fantastic, and I think the excitement of our first performance in the new space really shines through…
We had plenty of time for the setup/sound check for once, and we played a very nice short piece as a warmup/sound check which was recorded. Typically, Evil Clown recordings run an hour and 10 minutes which we track on a large sports clock. This time, I’m including the extra short piece as well.
This is a terrific performance of improvisation with poetry… I really like this set and I bet you will also!
PEK – 23 February 2023
On Metal Chaos Ensemble: "... using unique strategies to yield densely active and eerily surreal music, an incredible excursion through experimental improvisation." - Squidco website staff
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