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 2025, we have recorded over 60 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.  More recently, the Turbulence Orchestra and Sub-Units project has been performing twice a year in Brattleboro VT.

This set was originally scheduled to be Metal Chaos Ensemble – Studying the Pattern, which would have been a very different set.  MCE works with recited text and has a more rock flavor than typical in Evil Clown sessions.  We are in a bit of a flux at the moment, since Bob Moores moved to Maine, but we have Mike Gruen who is a rock style bassist and Eric Woods on the analog synthesis as regulars, and various others as guests.  Michael Caglianone and John Fugarino are frequently the other horn players on MCE sessions, and we planned to have the great drummer Jared Seabrook and a frequent synth guest Cyrus…

A few days prior to the session, I started to lose ensemble members…  Cyrus was out of town on business…  Mike Gruen has young children and had babysitter issues… I got Scott Samenfeld to sub on the bass chair and told him to bring his bass guitar instead of his electric upright which he usually brings.  Late on the day of the show, I heard from Jared and then from Eric that they would not be able to make it either…  I tried to get a sub for drums, but the time was too tight…

One huge advantage of doing improvised music is that last second changes (even drastic ones like these) do not really cause a problem like they would in an ensemble performing repertoire.  However, we did not have enough elements of the Metal Chaos Ensemble aesthetic problem to call the unit Metal Chaos Ensemble and perform the text that I had prepared, so I postponed that performance for a later time, snuck downstairs and whipped up a poster for Turbulence – Currents.

The quartet for Turbulence – Currents is basically a slightly larger version of the trio for the last several Perturbations performances.  Perturbations is the Evil Clown Ensemble that features over the top signal processing from Joel in Real time – I keep the unit small (3 instrumentalists or less) to emphasize Joel’s role.  PEK, Michael Caglianone, and John Fugarino have done 3 Perturbation sets together and, also dozens of sets within larger Evil Clown units.  We are very tight now as a horn section, and this session proved to be an interesting variation with the added bass following up on those Perturbation performances.

I really like this set, and I bet you will too…

PEK 9/30/2025