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.  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.

Michael has been our most frequent percussionist across the Evil Clown Ensembles and Expanse has had several different approaches over the last few years. Amplitudes (from January 2026) is somewhat a return to some of the early Expanse sessions. When Michael came on board, he had a regular working group called the JMDE quartet which included Jimmy Zhao on Chinese instruments, along with David Welans and Eric Dahlman. The JMDE Quartet came to Evil Clown Headquarters and did 2 sessions in fall of 2021 as Expanse meets the JMDE Quartet and subsequently, Jimmy brought other Chinese musicians to Leap of Faith Chinese Orchestra sets, and David Welans came to several Turbulence Orchestra sets in 2022. Jimmy and David both fell off the radar after a while, which is not unusual in the Evil Clown Roster.

Last year, David reached out and said he was ready to do some sessions again, so I set up the Amplitudes set with 4 of the 5 players from the Expanse meets the JMDE Quartet sessions and with newbie Kelsey Gallagher replacing Jimmy Zhao on clarinet. David, Eric and Michael played a lot together as a unit with a lot of subtle and quieter sounds. The origins of Expanse explored this territory, but as time has gone on, we have trended a bit towards larger ensembles and bigger sonorities. Amplitudes returned to this space, having a lower mean dynamic than most Evil Clown sessions so the quieter sounds speak clearly.

It was clear when Amplitudes was performed that this ensemble would be a recurring edition of Expanse… It has been 6 months since we did this line up – I attempted to schedule it several times, but we never did quite get there. Anyway, Vast is that revisit to the 4 horns + Percussion Expanse Edition premiered on Amplitudes, and it is another equally strong performance. Again, the mean dynamic is quieter than typical of most Evil Clown performances, which leaves plenty of space for very quiet and subtle interactions…

One other item of Note: Vast marks the first performance by PEK on the Contrabass Sarrusophone – a large woodwind instrument from an extinct family of double reeds not used in classical music for over 100 years.  This will be a very useful instrument for me, so you’ll hear more of it in the future.

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

PEK, 21 June 2026