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
PEK - alto, tenor & bass saxophones, clarinet & contralto clarinet, mussette, contrabassoon, alto flute, Russian wood flute, sheng, game calls, [d]ronin, hand chimes, orchestral chimes, glockenspeil, malletkat/moog subsequent, bronosaurus and tank bells, gongs, Tibetan bowls, kazoo, rachet, Ableton mix*
Michael Caglianone - soprano, alto & tenor saxophones, sheng, game calls, wind siren, hand chimes, bronosaurus and tank bells, gongs, cymbells, glockenspiel, balafon, dan-mo, wood blocks, rattles
Yuri Zbitnov - drums, orchestral chimes, Englephone, bronosaurus and tank bells, glockenspeil, Tibetan bowls, crotales, [d]ronin, malletkat/moog subsequent, kazoo
*Processed Samples from the Evil Clown Catalog and specially recorded at Evil Clown Headquarters
Review by Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
"... There is immense suspense being evoked, slowly one reed instrument enters at a time, mostly low-end terrain, the eerie vibe slowly building… Consistently impressive throughout and they take their sweet time to get there.” (full text below)
Liner Notes by PEK
"...As the Evil Clown story unfolds, we have some ensemble variations which immediately gel deeply and bear repeating. This was the third performance by this particular trio version of Turbulence in only a few months... (full liner notes below)"
Squidco Blurb
The extended horn section for the Leap of Faith Orchestra from the Boston-area collective led by reedist/multi-instrumentalist David Peck, here with PEK on an assortment of saxophones, clarinets, flutes, game calls and percussion, the other horns from Michael Caglianone on sax, game calls, wind sirens and percussion, with drums, bells, bowls and other percussion from Yuri Zbitnoff.
Turbulence (Cosmocentric Edition) - Eddy Flux
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
3 October 2019
Review by Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
TURBULENCE [COSMOCENTRIC EDITION] with PEK / MIKE CAGLIANONE / YURI ZBITNOV - Eddy Flux (Evil Clown 9230: USA) Featuring PEK on tenor & bass saxes, clarinets, Mussette, flutes, game calls, assorted ethnic & ancient percussion; Mike Caglianone on soprano, alto & tenor saxes, sheng, game call & assorted percussion and Yuri Zbitnov on drums & varied percussion. Recorded at the Evil Clown Headquarters in on 10/3/2019. This is a rare trio version of Turbulence, an ongoing Leap of faith offshoot project. This version featured founding LoF founding members PEK and occasional Turbulence member Yuri Zbitnov on drums.
Word is that after many years and perhaps 100 discs, LoF drummer, Yuri Zbitnov is finally retiring from all Leap of Faith projects. This trio also features the newest member of the Leap of Faith, Mike Caglianone, mostly on reeds & percussion.
This disc starts off with just a spacious layer of percussion, cymbals, drums, gongs, bells, tapped, rubbed or even bowed with selective reverb used to enhance the sound. There is immense suspense being evoked, slowly one reed instrument enters at a time, mostly low-end terrain, the eerie vibe slowly building. Both PEK and Mr. Caglianone mostly concentrate on one instrument at a time. The drumming by Mr. Zbitnov is often at the center here as he navigates the flow or stream which connects the other members. Sometimes whipping up a strong storm force, sometimes quietly balancing the rhythmic flow in between periods of space. Zbitnov is a master drummer and his presence will certainly be missed in the future for Leap of Faith and their offshoot clan. No matter who is soloing, Mr. Zbitnov knows how to accompany and push them higher, to whatever the next level is. This trio is a more modest, less turbulent one most of the time. Consistently impressive throughout and they take their sweet time to get there.
- Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
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. We have had over 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, among other settings.
This time, Turbulence is a trio with two horn players and a drummer. Sax player Mike Caglianone came to EC recently by way of a great Mission Creep show. He and I played really well with each other right off the bat, and I immediately recruited him for Evil Clown. Mike and I both have improvisation styles which feature a strong emphasis on phrasing: I’ve found that players with this approach are very easy to improvise with. Imitation, interlocking lines, motivic exchanges and other key improvisation techniques naturally flow from a phrasing perspective.
In the 90s, Yuri and I played with the great sax player Raqib Hassan in various settings, including Cosmocentric Trio (two saxes & drums). Of course, this is the same instrumentation as this new trio format, and during The Conception of Sense performance at Outpost 186, Yuri busted out the Sun Ra Saturn chant which was a staple of The Cosmocentric Trio! In Tribute to Raqib, we present Turbulence (Cosmocentric Edition) – Eddy Flux.
As the Evil Clown story unfolds, we have some ensemble variations which immediately gel deeply and bear repeating. This was the third performance by this particular trio version of Turbulence in only a few months.
PEK – 10/4/2019
Audio CD Evil Clown 9230
Turbulence (Cosmocentric Edition) - Eddy Flux
bandcamp: streaming, downloads and CD mail Order
Squidco: CD Mail Order
Eddy Flux - 1:10:48
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 is the horn players from the Leap of Faith Orchestra. We have performed a wide range of shows with ensembles ranging from duets to 8 or 9 players. Over half of our recordings are of ensembles comprised of horn players (many of whom play some of the Evil Clown percussion arsenal) but no drummer. Yuri, however, is on a number of the sets adding drum set to the horn band. We also had a special variation of this band, Turbulence Doom Choir, with PEK, Yuri and the tubas of Dave Harris and John Baylies and electronic signal processing until John split Boston for New York.
Here are some great links to Turbulence sets with Yuri at the drums!
Son of Cosmocentric
The Conception of Sense (2019)
bandcamp YouTube
bandcamp YouTube
Flow Across Scales (2018)
Vorticity (2018)
bandcamp YouTube
Amorphous Solids (2018)
bandcamp YouTube
Viscous Friction (2016)
bandcamp YouTube
These are the subproject, Turbulence Doom Choir, with PEK, Yuri + tubas
Turbulence Doom Choir
Energy Cascades (2017)
Angular Velocity Vectors (2017)
bandcamp
----YouTube
Angular Displacement
Matrix of the Frame
Skew-Symmetric
Netherworld (2017)
bandcamp
YouTube:
1: 2: 4: 8: 16: 32:
Lava Flow (2016)
bandcamp YouTube
Video Grabs
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