Liner Notes by PEK

Albey onBass and Jane SpokenWord were associated with Cecil Taylor’s final trio. Following Cecil’s passing they were in Boston for about a year in 2017-2018 and Albey performed a dozen or so times with Leap of Faith, Metal Chaos Ensemble and Turbulence. In November 2018, Albey and I had been discussing doing a duet, but we decided to include Jane’s poetry as a trio. This new Evil Clown Ensemble we called Axioms, which to me is an apt name for a band which features words – something that most Evil Clown sessions do not.

There are two definitions:

1) a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true

2) a statement or proposition on which an abstractly defined structure is based (mathematics)

These two meanings bridge the distance between poetic discussion of truths and abstract musical structures.

A few months later, about a year before the virus, Albey and Jane moved to New Orleans, so the original session from December 2018, Manifestations, had been our only recording to date.

In July of 2021, Albey and Jane returned to the Northeast, splitting their time between New York and Boston.  Albey has performed since then with many Evil Clown Ensembles, and this newest Axioms recording is the 7th set.  Glynis Lomon, cellist from Leap of Faith has been on most of the newer Axioms recordings, so the most common unit is quartet.

Axioms is fundamentally different from the other Evil Clown Ensembles since it features Jane’s poetry – Jane and Albey have performed many times together along with many notable players from the free improvisation scene.  So, Axioms is really the Evil Clown setting for Jane and Albey’s ongoing poetry project.

This is the first Axioms set since the studio upgrades have been finished at Evil Clown.  With only 4 performers and no drum set, there was much more room than we had in the old studio space.  We were able to set up in a circle facing each other, with the auxiliary instruments mounted to the walls around the perimeter.  The new space is really fantastic, and I think the excitement of our first performance in the new space really shines through…

We had plenty of time for the setup/sound check for once, and we played a very nice short piece as a warmup/sound check which was recorded.  Typically, Evil Clown recordings run an hour and 10 minutes which we track on a large sports clock.  This time, I’m including the extra short piece as well.

This is a terrific performance of improvisation with poetry…  I really like this set and I bet you will also!

PEK – 23 February 2023