Liner Notes by PEK

Every once in a while, a new ensemble gets started at Evil Clown.  Sometimes the new unit has a particular aesthetic problem, and an appropriate band name assigned defined in advance.  For example, Metal Chaos Ensemble started as a duet between me and Yuri Zbitnov as soon as we started to work with newly acquired metal instruments in 2015, and Turbulence was formed to feature groups of horn players – sometime as only horn players and sometimes with bass and drums.  Sometimes the new unit is spun off from an existing ensemble with some variation or different set of resources.  Simulacrum was spun off from Metal Chaos Ensemble to include even more electronic instrumentation and signal processing and to not require a drummer.

Sometimes the new unit comes about because new players join the roster and contribute to a session by an existing ensemble, and it is clear their contribution adds a distinctive voice to the Evil Clown palette which deserves a new band name.  Such is the case with Neurodivergent.  Count Robot, DNA Girl and Tim Mungenast played on two Expanse records in 2023 (Swathe in March and Gamut in July).  They bring an odd sensibility that involves improvised spoken word banter between the three of them and a more pop-culture oriented use of guitar, mandolin and electronics than is typical in the other Evil Clown ensembles.  For the third set featuring these three relative newbies, I rolled out the new band name, Neurodivergent, to explore combinations of their aesthetic as a group of players with a long history with various combinations of players from the Evil Clown Roster. 

While most of the Evil Clown ensembles perform strictly instrumental music that does not contain words, a few of the bands do use words and I like how the text provides an entry point for the audience to access the music.  Metal Chaos Ensemble uses text from literature and movies and Axioms uses the Poetry of the amazing poet Jane SpokenWord who recites her words in small ensembles which also feature the amazing bass playing of her husband Albey onBass.  In these settings, the words come from fixed text, but the delivery and the choice of which words and when to place them are improvised.  In Neurodivergent, the improvisation of the words is on another level… None of the text is fixed in advance; all the words are improvised in reaction to the Wacky Banter of the others.  This music contains a great deal of playfulness and humor which is often lacking in the world of pure improvisation.  I have long valued humor in music as a method of engaging people and I think this band is the best example so far of an Evil Clown ensemble which centers humor as a critical element.

My housemate Raffi and I recently rewatched The Tick – the cartoon show and both live action shows.  We loved the silly nature of the shows, but one cartoon episode in particular really jumped out at me – The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight… Spoken word themes from previous Neurodivergent sets have included monsters, scientists and explosions, and this episode of The Tick really seemed to tie in with those themes.  I sent around YouTube links to the episode to the ensemble about a week before the show so that all the Wacky Banterers could get a taste, and we played the full episode in the Evil Clown lounge prior to the performance.  Unlike the Metal Chaos Ensemble sets which quote big sections of the text from the various cultural objects we are commenting on, here we mostly banter about the show, and we only quote it a little bit.

So, there is a bit more planning than has been typical to date for Neurodivergent performances, but most of the words are still completely improvised, we do not do any detailed planning, and since there are several of us performing speaking parts, the interactions provoke all kinds of unexpected results. However, a more carefully considered theme results in a through-line for the narrative over the duration of the piece.  I also like the tension that occurs between this narrative and the more absurd improvised interjections.

Anyway, we had a terrific Livestream performance.  I really dig this set and I bet you do too…

PEK 9/21/2025