from Harmonic Oscillators, released February 28, 2024
NOTE: THE CD IS A PREORDER. IT USUALLY TAKES AVOUT 3 WEEKS TO GET THEM BACK FROM THE MANUFACTURER. ORDER YOURS NOW, YOU CAN SNAB THE FREE ASSOCIATED DOWNLOAD FOR THE SHORT TERM AND I WILL SHIP YOUR DISC AS SOON AS THEY ARRIVE...
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---PEK Liner Notes
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Every once in a while, a new Evil Clown Project emerges. Mostly, the new ensembles are based on a small core group and a basic aesthetic problem which we solve in performance. For example, Turbulence is the band with mostly horn players, but the ensemble makeup is different each performance.
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Perturbations is the newish Evil Clown Ensemble which started up in early 2022 with six albums under our belt. The core unit is PEK and Joel Simches… Joel is the Evil Clown house engineer who comes to nearly all the recording sessions at Evil Clown Headquarters. Some of the bands (for example, Metal Chaos Ensemble and Simulacrum) feature Joel’s real time signal processing in addition to his role as the recording engineer. Now that the Studio has been updated with new equipment (board and effects) Joel’s Perturbation options have increased and improved.
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Early last year (2022), I suggested to Joel that we form this new group where the signal processing takes on the role of an instrumentalist, significantly more complex than the general color and delay we use in the other ensembles. For this band, Joel Perturbs the sounds created by me on horns, percussion, and electronics, creating a compound musical statement with the blended source sounds and the Perturbed sonority. Shortly after that, in February, we recorded the first session for this project as a duet, producing Agitation. As I expected, the result meets the requirement I have for a new Evil Clown project name which is to create a distinctive sound world from a particular section through Evil Clown’s broad palette…
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Following the first duet set, the others have added one or two additional instrumentalists making the full ensemble a trio or a quartet counting Joel. So far the instrumentalists have included Michael Caglianone on reeds, and Albey onBass on bass. We’ve done trios with me and Michael, with me and Albey and quartets with all four of us. Albey is an amazing bass player who played with Cecil Taylor’s trio and big band for over 10 years. Micheal is a great reed player who ran a recording studio in the Boston area for many years and recorded many notable local musicians.
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This is the first Perturbations set with Bob Moores on trumpet, guitar and electronics. Bob is a heavy Evil Clown regular who has been active the entire time since the 2015 reboot and is now on over 100 of our recordings. Bob, Michael and I have played together many times as three players within a larger ensemble, so this lineup was an obvious choice for a Perturbations set. Bob, Michael and I all play a huge range of instruments including our primary axes and the auxiliary instruments which are permanently set up in the studio, so the broad palette concept is really on display as we all make steady instrument changes creating dramatic transformations of sonority over the length of the work.
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A quartet with 3 instrumentalists and Joel is the largest the ensemble should ever be for this band since there is enough sonic space for Joel to make a dramatic musical contribution. So, moving forward this band will be a quartet or smaller.

I am interested in the difficult aesthetic problem of larger improvisation ensembles due to the possibilities of rich sonorities and dramatic transformation. In my long improvisation history, I have, however, performed with many small units, including solo. Small improvisation units are easier in some ways, since there are fewer musical elements at any point in time that need to converge on each overall sonority. The Perturbations recordings so far show that smaller ensemble improvisation with Joel’s Perturbations can provide broad palette improvisation every bit as deep and complex as what can be achieved by a bigger band.

With Joel at the controls of the signal processing, we essentially have real-time decision making as a performance unit, and we get the full-time attention of a master engineer on the electronic Perturbations of the instrumental expressions. I really like this combination of live playing and over-the top signal processing. Now having addressed this particular aesthetic problem 6 times, I can see that this will be an ongoing Evil Clown project with at least several LIVESTREAM’s per year.

I really like this performance and I bet you will too!! Check it out…

PEK, 2/27/2024