Liner Notes by PEK

In May of 2021, I opened Evil Clown Headquarters to other fully vaccinated musicians, and the first session of the new age was scheduled for the second set of the Expanse sound world.  Michael and I both enjoyed the auspicious first set right before the pandemic shut down and collaboration became an ongoing Evil Clown project, originally as a duet for some sets and then as a larger unit.  As an ongoing project, it needed a permanent name, so after some thought I came up with Expanse which evokes space and restraint, the central idea behind this ensemble at its inception.

As is often the case as a new ensemble develops over time, the original scope of intent is deepened and broadened.  An Evil Clown session that is assigned to Expanse really is a set with Michael and me and others where it is not Leap of Faith, Turbulence, Metal Chaos Ensemble, or some other Evil Clown Ensemble.  The recordings have varied from acoustic duet to trios and various larger bands with electronics and other sounds.  Michael does frequently appear as the percussionist and sometimes drummer on performances by these other Evil Clown bands.   Last year we debuted a new variation, Expanse Percussion Edition, calling back to early Metal Chaos Ensemble performances.  In 2015, Yuri and I were seeking to explore the rapidly expanding sonority set of mostly metallic percussion that I was acquiring to broaden the palette available to the Leap of Faith Orchestra.  Many of the MCE sets in the first 3 years or so were me and Yuri with other drummers/percussionists from the LOFO together with some other horn players and electronic musicians.  Eventually Metal Chaos Ensemble morphed away from this format and became the more standard electro-acoustic sextet format that has been presented over the last 3 or 4 years.

The Percussion Edition follows up on the original idea of MCE with completely different performers and with a larger collections of membrane instruments to go with the metal instruments still in use… So, The Clash of the Clompers is the fith time out with this concept – this time with five horn players (Me, John Fugarino, Michael Caglianone, Bob Moores and Hilary Noble – all doubling percussion and other instruments), Michael, Andy Korajczyk, John Loggia and Jared Seabrook on percussion; and Scott Samenfeld on the fretless bass.  It’s a different take on the general Evil Clown Aesthetic concept of broad palate performing concert length improvisations featuring dramatic transformations through many different sonorities. 

At 10 performers, this is a very large ensemble for free improvisation.  Long Form Large Format Broad Palette Improvisation is our specialty here at Evil Clown Headquarters, and all the players on this set are experienced at doing it here in our very specially outfitted studio. The extraordinarily large array of sonorities available to this skilled unit are used to create organic series of transformations across the duration of the work.  We are balanced on percussion and horns with many of each available, and many of the players use the auxiliary instruments in the room. When many players make frequent instrument changes, form naturally arises from the sequence of resulting sonorites.

I was expecting this to be a great session, and I was not disappointed.

PEK, 16 February 2026