published on
Evil Clown 9313
LIVESTREAMED to YouTube from Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA
7 July 2022
Meditations on Reality – 1:10:04
. PEK - clarinet & contralto clarinets, alto & tenor saxophones, tarota, bass flute, kora, tank cello, melodica, slide whistle, novation peak, moog subsequent, prophet, syntrix, arp odyssey, lfo synths, Linnstrument controllers, [d]ronin, daxophone, baby bomb piano, 17 string bass, spring & chime rod boxes, almglocken, Tibetan bowl, crotales, gong, plate gong, brontosaurus & tank bells, temple blocks, log drums, balafon, glockenspiel, xylophone, orchestral chimes, 5 hole Russian flute, fog horn, voice . Mike Caglianone - soprano, alto & tenor saxophones, [d]ronin, spring & chime rod boxes, plate gong, crotales, Englephone . Bob Moores - Modified trumpet with pickups horn and mouthpiece played through Zoom pedal and Ampkit, Mustang modified tenor guitar played through Ampkit on iPhone 13, kracklebox, MainStage softsynths on MacBook Air with full keyboard, ARP Odyssey emulator on iPad with mini keyboard, vocal emanations on microphone through pedal chain, log drums, temple blocks, wood blocks, 17 string bass . Eric Woods - analog synthesis, novation peak, moog subsequent, prophet, Englephone, 17 string bass, gong . Joel Simches - live-to-2 track recording, perturbations
Liner Notes by PEK
A new project that was conceived just prior to the Virus shut things down is Simulacrum. This new band is an offshoot of Metal Chaos Ensemble featuring 3 the core members PEK on all my stuff, Eric Woods on analog synth, and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar, and electronics. 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.
This set was originally scheduled to be Metal Chaos Ensemble. Unlike most of the Evil Clown ensembles, the contemporary MCE has a pretty fixed sextet line up: PEK, Bob Moores, Mike Caglianone, Eric Woods, Mike Gruen, Steve Niemitz. Steve comes in from Western Mass (about an hour and a half from ECH), so I don’t schedule as many MCE sets as I did when Yuri was still performing on the drum chair. Anyway, in the age of Covid, it has not been unusual to reconfigure a session due to illness: In this case Steve got Covid, and then a few days later Mike lost his babysitter… Anyway, I almost never cancel a session once it is on the book, so we proceeded with quartet instead of sextet and changed the band name to Simulacrum.
Simulacrum has done quite a few sessions since the vaccines have allowed the LIVESTREAMING sets to resume. Also, this quartet has played as 4 of the 6 players in a MCE sets a bunch more times… Things are really gelling, and the electronics have taken a comfortable center stage on more recent Simulacrum albums. This time, Mike Caglianone, appears as a guest with the core trio, and the quartet really sings, producing one of the strangest efforts yet from this band.
Bob Moores is one of the most frequent Evil Clown contributors besides Glynis, appearing on well over 50 of our albums in most of the ensembles. At a the most recent Turbulence performance Bob busted out, for the very first time, some weird sting-of-consciousness vocalizations. These cray little stories make a reappearance here in half a dozen or so sections. When I asked Bob for his instrumentation this time he gave me this: “vocal emanations on microphone through pedal chain”.
Despite being a quartet instead of sextet for this set, we produced a prototypical Simulacrum session, thick with electronic sounds, horns, and the broad palette percussion of an Evil Clown Livestream set.
I like this set and I bet you will too.
PEK Out – 7/10/2022
- Genre
- Pure Improvisation