Liner Notes by PEK

Perturbation’s first session occurred in 2022.  The core unit is PEK and Joel Simches…  Joel is the Evil Clown house engineer who comes to nearly all the recording sessions at Evil Clown Headquarters.  Some of the bands (for example, Metal Chaos Ensemble and Simulacrum) feature Joel’s real time signal processing in addition to his role as the recording engineer. The Perturbations Project steps up Joel’s role to bring his real-time electronic Perturbations of the ensemble performance into greater prominence. Now that the Studio has been updated with new equipment (board and effects) Joel’s Perturbation options have increased and improved.

To help feature Joel’s electronic manipulations, we keep the instrumental unit to no more than 3 players.  This set, Aberrations, is the twelfth Perturbation Set, and the fifth to feature three of our strongest horn players, me (reeds), Michael Caglianone (reeds), and John Fugarino (brass), while the other 7 Perturbation sets have all had different lineups drawn from the Evil Clown Roster.  All three of us also double the percussion, electronics, electro-acoustic and other instruments from the studio.  The broad palate concept works best when all the players change instruments frequently through the performance, creating a steady flow of transformations across sonorities over the duration.  

Michael, John and I have played together many times in the last 4 years since John appeared again following his long absence. We have appeared together in many different Evil Clown settings from Leap of Faith to Turbulence to the more electronic leaning projects – essentially all the various Contemporary Ensembles. 

The combination of strong deeply connected improvisors with deep broad palette doubling and Joel’s perturbations resulted in an extraordinary improvisation.  There is a bit more space than usual, and a lot of very interesting sounds from the auxiliary instruments.  With Joel at the controls of the signal processing, we essentially have real-time decision making as a performance unit, and we get the full-time attention of a master engineer on the electronic Perturbations of the instrumental expressions.  I really like this combination of live playing with over-the top signal processing.  Now having addressed this particular aesthetic problem a dozen times, I can see that this will be an ongoing Evil Clown project with at least several LIVESTREAM’s per year.

I really like this performance, and I bet you will too!!  Check it out…

PEK, 4/18/2026