On Metal Chaos Ensemble: "... using unique strategies to yield densely active and eerily surreal music, an incredible excursion through experimental improvisation." - Squidco website staff
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
Review Excerpt by Darren Bergstein, Downtown Music Gallery
“… damn if this release doesn’t tear the roof off the sucka. Gonna splay it right up front: this stuff absolutely kills. It will blow your mind, alter your perceptions, derange your senses, and upset all your categorical applecarts… Give yourself in totality to this quintet of quan as they unleash their protoplasmic artform in all its gutbucket, earthshaking, cerebellum-crushing magnificence.”
Excerpt from PEK Liner Notes
“... 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. Even without the drums, this set tilts more in the noise direction than typical of Metal Chaos Ensemble. I am interested to see where this project goes as we continue. I like this session and I think you may too…”
An offshoot of the Boston-area collective Metal Chaos Ensemble featuring multi-reedist PEK, also on percussion & electronics, Eric Woods on analog synth and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar and electronics, with guests Grant Beale on guitar & electronics and William Middlemiss Jr on guitar and electronics, in an electronic and clamorous extended improvisation.
---------------------
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
Review by Darren Bergstein, Downtown Music Gallery
SIMULACRUM - Hyperreality (Evil Clown 9277; USA) Unsure if pandemic isolationism’s been creatively kinetic to Evil Clown honcho Dave PEK, or the ‘unshackling’ from it this year’s been explosively inspiring, but damn if this release doesn’t tear the roof off the sucka. Gonna splay it right up front: this stuff absolutely kills. It will blow your mind, alter your perceptions, derange your senses, and upset all your categorical applecarts. Which is another way of saying that the good Mr. PEK and his illustrious cohorts have done it again. In addition to PEK’s gigantic array of sound-designers and noise-facilitators, Simulacrum the group consists of Bob Moores on a whole host of electronic gadgetry, guitars, distorto-pedals, handheld objects, and aural demystifiers, Eric Woods banging gongs and twiddlin’ knobs, William Middlemiss Jr also striking guitars and synthees, and the Reverend Grant Beale separating glitch from (solid) state, warping circuitry, drones, and feedback with secular gusto. This hour-plus extravaganza comes roaring right out of the gate and across its illustrious timespan simply takes no prisoners. The collective invent, morph, and travel the spaceways in an expansive, intergalactic trawl through a myriad of folded dimensions that manage to channel the most outré moments hard-won from King Crimson, Gong, and Merzbow, to the likes of Acid Mothers Temple, Nurse With Wound, AMM, and some archaic, hauntological INA-GRM burn-out who took one lysergic lapdance too many. In any event, this slab's a hive-mind of wild, vivid propulsion, where sounds intersect, congeal, and blossom with a vast, molten power that appears to regenerate by the minute. Guitars the blush of Frippian crimson conjure memories of the man’s “Fracture”-ed landscapes. Electronics, birthed by synth, modules, and various other mysterious paraphernalia, twit, twirl, and entwine themselves in the guzz and girth like malevolent insects hastily building labyrinthine nests. All throughout, PEK’s charging horns, bells, and various elegant machineries bleat and blurt like bubbling lava breaking through the surface. What is astonishing on all levels is the fact that none of this, despite near-constant variations in complexion, volume, hue, and cry ever degenerates into atonal cacophony but somehow maintains an awesome, fearless power throughout, never the same yet somehow thrillingly cohesive. Give yourself in totality to this quintet of quan as they unleash their protoplasmic artform in all its gutbucket, earthshaking, cerebellum-crushing magnificence. - Darren Bergstein, DMG
LIVESTREAMED TO YOUTUBE
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
10 July 2021
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.
Simulacrum - Hyperreality
Video Grabs & Instrument Photos..
Audio CD Evil Clown 9277
Simulacrum - Hyperreality
LIVESTREAMED TO YOUTUBE
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
10 July 2021
bandcamp: streaming, downloads and CD mail Order
Squidco: CD Orders
Hyperreality - 1:10:31
PEK -clarinet & contralto clarinet, tenor & bass saxophones, tarota, Christmas flute, spring boxes, chime boxes, [d]ronin, electric chimes, box bells, electric kalimba, lfo synth, theremin, korg ms-20, moog subsequent, prophet, syntrix, novation peak, gong, brontosaurus & tank bells, glockenspeil, crotales, almglocken, wood blocks, temple blocks, log drums, orchestral chimes, chimes, digital delay, looper
Bob Moores - Jackson electric guitar modded with extreme distortion circuit and kill switch, large bell pocket trumpet, cornet and flugelhorn with miked mutes through effects, mainstage, NLogPoly synth and ampkit on MacBook Air, Moog D emulator and Ampkit on iPad mini, multi-effects pedal, delay pedal and loop pedal, kracklebox electronic instrument, crank siren
Eric Woods - analog synthesis, chimes, gong, temple blocks
William Middlemiss Jr - guitar, microfreak synthesizer
Reverend Grant Beale - guitar, MXR analog delay, electro harmonix freeze pedal, handwired fuzz/glitch, Michael Rucci made 16 step sequencer and maximal drone, bastl made granular synth
YouTube Videos..
Liner Notes by PEK
The pandemic forced me to focus on solo works for its duration. It was fun to explore the world of overdubbing and multichannel recording for a year or so, but I am more than ready to resume ensemble playing. When the hammer came down in March of 2020, Evil Clown had some great momentum recording a number of great projects in a few short months: Leap of Faith had just recorded Principles of an Open Future for Relative Pitch, Metal Chaos Ensemble had just recorded The Riddle of Steel, Turbulence had just recorded Friction Coefficients, and new ensemble Expanse had just recorded Main Sequence. All of these projects would have made great music during the last year. Now that we are coming back to a more normal world and I have started LIVESTREAMING shows from Evil Clown Headquarters, all of these projects are picking up again.
Another new project that was conceived at this time was Simulacrum. This new band is an offshoot of Metal Chaos Ensemble featuring 3 members PEK on all my stuff, Eric Woods on analog synth, and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar and electronics. To this core I have added Reverend Grant Beale on Guitar and electronics and Evil Clown newbie William Middlemiss Jr on guitar and electronics. Grant was frequently on Leap of Faith, String Theory and Metal Chaos Ensemble sessions for a few years, and then we didn’t seem him too much for a year or two before the virus. He travels in from Connecticut which takes over an hour even when there is no traffic. Will has played with both Eric and Bob previously in the Boston area band Fablegrazer, which is a long running and varied electronic improvisation unit.
There was a first set for this band on the book which was cancelled for the virus. 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. Even without the drums, this set tilts more in the noise direction than typical of Metal Chaos Ensemble. I am interested to see where this project goes as we continue. I like this session and I think you may too…
PEK Out – 7/12/2021