Evil Clown
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
Simulacrum - Homunculus
LIVESTREAMED TO YOUTUBE
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
24 January 2023
Video Grabs...
YouTube Video..
On Metal Chaos Ensemble: "... using unique strategies to yield densely active and eerily surreal music, an incredible excursion through experimental improvisation." - Squidco website staff
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.
Excerpt from PEK Liner Notes
“… This was the first Evil Clown set following the studio conversion project. This was a major upgrade with the studio and my home theater space changing position in the house, some new doors, and a wall being removed between two rooms which will be an isolated mixing room for the audio and video mixes.…”
Liner Notes by PEK
Simulacrum is a relativity new project that was conceived just prior to the Virus shutting things down. This new band is an offshoot of Metal Chaos Ensemble featuring 3 the core members PEK on all my stuff, Eric Woods on analog synth, and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar, and electronics. The basic idea of this band is to increase the amount of electronics, to keep the ancillary percussion and loose the drum set, along with PEK and Bob holding down the horn parts. Without the drums, this set tilts more in the noise direction than typical of Metal Chaos Ensemble. This is the ninth session by this band, so I’m going to have to stop calling it new pretty soon…
This was the first Evil Clown set following the studio conversion project. This was a major upgrade with the studio and my home theater space changing position in the house, some new doors, and a wall being removed between two rooms which will be an isolated mixing room for the audio and video mixes.
All the players were excited to perform in the new space, including Eric Woods who did not come at the last second due to a nasty cold in his family. As the set up neared completion, I had started the initial steps of noticing the roster that we would be resuming after nearly 4 months of inactivity. Last week, I heard from Albey that he would be in town until the end of this week, so I booked this session around his availability. Albey participates in many of the Evil Clown Ensembles, so I had some choice about what to present, but the availability responses led me to Simulacrum with this line-up.
Anyhow, we had a tremendous performance, and the new space is fantastic (although we still have a few bugs left to work out). Check out the YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/XdaUMlH998k) to get see the new layout and a great performance by Simulacrum!!!
I like this set and I bet you will too.
PEK Out – 1/25/2023
Audio CD Evil Clown 9326
Simulacrum - Homunculus
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
24 January 2023
bandcamp: streaming, downloads and CD mail Order
Homunculus - 1:10:26
PEK - clarinet, contralto & contrabass clarinets, sopranino, alto & tenor saxophones, tarota, bass flute, sheng, tiny slide whistle, novation peak, moog subsequent, syntrx, arp odyssey, korg ms-20, Linnstrument controllers, [d]ronin, 17 string bass, guqin, nagoya, spring & chime rod boxes, electric chimes, crotales, orchestral anvils,orchestral chimes, glockenspiel, xylophone, balafon, almglocken, Tibetan chimes and bowls, chimes, wood blocks, brontosaurus & tank bells, gongs, plate gong, temple blocks, log drums, cow bells, Englephone, bowed cymbal, danmo, bell tree
Mike Caglianone - soprano, alto & tenor saxophones, tiny slide whistle, 17 string bass, [d]ronin, guqin, Englephone, nagoya, chime rod boxes, wood blocks, danmo, bell tree, gongs
Bob Moores - Electric space cornet with electric mouthpiece through Zoom effects pedal, Les Paul Goth electric guitar through Ampkit on iPod, MainStage soft synths on MacBook Pro with 61-key keyboard, MiniMoog emulator on iPad with mini-keyboard, kracklebox, voice, gong
Eric Zinman - Nord Stage 3, synthesizer, crank siren
Albey onBass - bass, moog subsequent
Joel Simches - real time signal processing, live to 2-track mix
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Links to previous PEK solo releases
Schisms (2020)
bandcamp
YouTube
Evil Clown Album Page
Precendents (2020)
YouTube YouTube YouTube YouTube
Coefficient of Unity (2019)
bandcamp
YouTube
Evil Clown Album Page
Indexical Utterance (2019)
bandcamp
YouTube
Evil Clown Album Page
Closed & Open Universes (2019)
bandcamp
YouTube
Evil Clown Album Page
The Unreality of Time (2018)
Non-Local Causality (2018)
bandcamp
Evil Clown Album Page
Fulcrum (2018)
bandcamp
YouTube
Evil Clown Album Page
Thulsa Doom (2017)
bandcamp
YouTube YouTube YouTube YouTube
Evil Clown Album Page