2
Audio CD Evil Clown 9180
Turbulence - Buoyancy
Streaming, downloads and CD Orders
Archimedes' Principle - 1:10:59
PEK - sopranino, alto, tenor & bass saxophones,
clarinet & contraalto clarinet, contrabassoon,
tromboon, alto flute sheng, melodica, harmonium,
orchestral chimes, hand chimes, cymbells, kazoo,
metal, wood
Dan O'Brien - alto, tenor & baritone saxophones,
clarinet, flute, crotales, cymbells, hand chimes,
metal, wood
Zack Bartolomei - alto & soprano saxophones,
clarinet, log drums, balafon, glockenspeil, crotales,
orchestral chimes, hand chimes, metal, wood,
crank siren, voice
Photos by Raffi,
Liner Notes by PEK
I formed Turbulence in 2015 as I started to assemble players for the Leap of Faith Orchestra. Turbulence, the extended horn section for the Orchestra (along with guests on other instruments), also records and performs as an independent unit. As if this writing in May of 2018, we have had about 20 albums on Evil Clown with greatly varied ensembles. The only musician on all of them is myself. The sessions range from an early duet with Steve Norton and Myself (Vortex Generation Mechanisms) to a 5 horn band with bass and two percussionists (Encryption Schemes) to four albums by the side project Turbulence Doom Choir which feature myself, multiple tubas, percussion, electronics and signal processing.
Zack Bartolomei and Dan O’Brien joined the Evil Clown roster a while back and have played with Leap of Faith, Leap of Faith Orchestra, and other projects. They go way back with each other. I love it when I find a group of improvisers who have long history with each other who are eager to participate since the whole ensemble benefits from the prior experience of the previously established sub-units. This is the third set by this trio version of Turbulence and is very tight due to the number of Evil Clown sessions with all three of us performing as part of the ensemble. In July 2017, we recorded the first of these trio sets, Agitation, and then in March 2018 we recorded the second, Incompressible Flow. This is a highly effective trio version of Turbulence that we plan do again in the future.
On this new album, Buoyancy, the trio takes advantage of the Evil Clown arsenal of exotic percussion along with our woodwinds to make many palate changes. This naturally results in the steady flow of transformations through highly varied sonorities presented here.
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.
Turbulence - Buoyancy
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
23 May 2018
On Leap of Faith: "Alien yet familiar, bizarre yet completely fascinating. Expanding, contracting, erupting, settling down, always as one force..." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
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