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
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 2021, we have recorded over 30 albums on Evil Clown with greatly varied ensembles. All the smaller Evil Clown bands are really more about a general approach, rather than a specific set of musicians. A session gets credited to Turbulence when it is mostly horn players and the only musician on all of them is me. The sessions range from an early duet with Steve Norton and me (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 and many other configurations.
This set, Roughness of Surfaces, is the largest Turbulence ensemble since we resumed this year at 7 horn players doubling percussion. I also play the newest instrument in the Evil Clown Arsenal, the 17-string bass, which just arrived from China after being stuck in customs for months. The neck is really wide, so the instrument must be played tabletop: Sounds great struck with rubber mallets, especially the very low notes. I tried a new configuration for the players and equipment in the studio which worked well. The 4 brass players performed in the second room where I usually have the heavy percussion and the three woodwind players performed in the main room with most of the auxiliary instruments.
The set features a couple of relative Evil Clown newbies: Vance Provey (tp) makes his second appearance after playing on a recent Leap of Faith session (Revealing the Essence), and David Welans (flutes) makes his second appearance after playing on the recent Expanse Meets the JDME Quartet session (Scope). I’m very interested in the aesthetic problems of larger group pure improvisations. My Broad Palate concept is a solution to this problem which works by introducing many different possible sonorities. Over the duration of the work, the combination of instruments undergoes tremendous variation, leading to a sequence of very different movements.
Anyway, I like this set and I bet you will too…
PEK – 11/15/2021
Turbulence - Roughness of Surfaces
Streamed Live to YouTube from
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
13 November 2021
Liner Notes Excerpt
“…The set features a couple of relative Evil Clown newbies: Vance Provey (tp) makes his second appearance after playing on a recent Leap of Faith session (Revealing the Essence), and David Welans (flutes) makes his second appearance after playing on the recent Expanse Meets the JDME Quartet session (Scope). I’m very interested in the aesthetic problems of larger group pure improvisations. My Broad Palate concept is a solution to this problem which works by introducing many different possible sonorities. Over the duration of the work, the combination of instruments undergoes tremendous variation, leading to a sequence of very different movements... ”
- PEK
Audio CD Evil Clown 9289
Turbulence - Roughness of Surfaces
LIVESTREAMED to YouTube
Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
13 November 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.
PEK - contralto & contrabass clarinets, alto, tenor & bass saxophones, bass flute, bass ocarina, tarota, contrabassoon, sheng, bass tromboon, duck call, 17 string bass, [d]ronin, electric chimes, chime rod boxes, telstar, spring boxes, gongs, brontosaurus & tank bells, Englephone, cow bells, almgocken, chimes, crotales, wood blocks, temple blocks, castanets, log drums, voice
David Welans - piccolo, flute, flute head joint, head joint-dizi conversion
Michael Caglianone- soprano, alto & tenor saxophones, Englephone, gongs, brontosaurus & tank bells, bell tree
Vance Provey - trumpet, crotales, balafon, wood blocks, temple blocks, log drums, Tibetan bowls, spring & chime boxes
Bob Moores - pocket cornet, pocket trumpet, cornet, trumpet, flugelhorn, Shofar, gongs, plate gong, chimes, trine, Tibetan bowls, brontosaurus & tank bells, cow bells, wood blocks, temple blocks, balafon, log drums, talking drum, crank siren
Eric Dahlman – trumpet, overtone voice, wood flute, slide whistle, spring & chime boxes, gongsDuane Reed - baritone horn, bass trombone, overtone voice, fog horn, balafon, Tibetan bowls, gong, crotales, almglocken, chimes, wood blocks, log drums
On Metal Chaos Ensemble: "... using unique strategies to yield densely active and eerily surreal music, an incredible excursion through experimental improvisation." - Squidco website staff