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 2024, we have recorded over 50 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.  

The four-horn players on Squalls (Michael, Bob, John & me) are the most regularly appearing horns in the Evil Clown Roster.  Bob has been active the entire Contemporary Period and has been on well over 100 Evil Clown recordings by a bunch of the bands.  Michael Caglianone joined us a few years later after being in Greg Grinnel’s Mission Creep with me and original drummer Yuri Zbitnov…  He has appeared on nearly 50 albums.  John Fugarino and I played together a lot in the early 90s with Masashi Harada in the same band where I first played with cellist Glynis Lomon from Leap of Faith.  We were out of touch for a long time, but we reconnected on Facebook a few years back and since then he has appeared on nearly 30 albums.  So, we have all played together quite a bit in various contexts and developed the kind of deep insight that comes after a lot of improvisation together.  All of us double a lot of instruments – not only other horns, but percussion, electro-acoustic and electronic instruments, which greatly contribute to the effectiveness of the broad palate approach we specialize in here at Evil Clown.  In fact, there is relatively little 4 horn counterpoint over the duration since we all spend so much time on other axes.  The constant shifting in instrumentation creates a steady transformation across sonorities over the duration of the work.

The rhythm section for Squalls is bassist Scott Samenfeld and percussionist Michael Knoblach.  Scott has appeared on over 10 Leap of Faith and Turbulence albums.  He brings a more jazz approach than has been typically used by most of our bass players over the years.  I like how this contributes to the ensemble sound in the Turbulence setting where it makes us like a 4-horn front-line jazz ensemble for portions of the performance.  Michael is currently Evil Clown’s most regular percussionist and performs occasionally on drum set, but most of the time on hand percussion from various cultures and unusual found object noise makers.  For this set, he brought some different mostly African instruments including some very large slit drums in the shape of African people – check out the photos!

I’m constantly acquiring new instruments and there are a few things used for the first time on this session.  I got an electro-acoustic instrument called a Noise Tower from an outfit called Azzam Bells in Italy which showed up in the afternoon before the set.  We set up a station for this new axe along with the Daxophone and the Spiny Norman (made by Tim Kaiser).  I also got a giant Rubber Chicken squeak toy.  Several of us used these new sounds for this set.  Still worth noting is the Glissophone which I used for the third time on this set which I got from London recently.  This instrument is the size of a soprano sax, but made of wood – instead of tone holes and keys, it has a long slot which is sealed by a length of fabric with a metal background against a magnetic strip to either side of the slot.  I very interesting horn that presents lots of new sound possibilities!!

Anyway, I like this set and I bet you will too… PEK – 6/29/2024