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, both as a duet for some sets and as a larger unit for others.  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 other Evil Clown bands.

Clangorous Sounds Arise is a very different set in the Expanse Book, but it calls 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.

Michael has brought a bunch of really interesting players to Evil Clown since our first contact.  For the last year or so we have been discussing bringing his friend Ken Lovelett in from upstate New York along with several of Ken’s other New York percussion pals to do a percussion ensemble edition of Expanse.  Ken had a few people in mind, but scheduling issues combined with the 4-5 hour travel distance managed to keep this idea from ever making the book.  Ken’s work is very interesting – he makes sound sculptures (https://www.americanpercussion.com/) which look and sound amazing, so I really wanted to get him over to Evil Clown Headquarters.

Eventually, we decided to recruit some local percussionists to fill out the ensemble so we could execute the plan with resources that were more available.  Michael contacted an excellent drummer/percussionist Sergio Bellotti who is on the Berklee faculty and Sergio brought his wife, Teri Cotè, and his student, Andy Korajczyk.  Originally, the ensemble was to be completed by relative newcomer tenor saxophonist Hilary Noble (also on the Berklee faculty) who made his first appearance recently.  Hilary is also an excellent conga player and would have been an excellent fit for this session.  Unfortunately, he had a last second conflict and had to withdraw.  This happens, and here at Evil Clown we always roll with it and get the work done, so I reached out to the roster and within a matter of a few hours Bob Moores signed on to sub on space trumpet for the second horn role.

So, Clangorous Sounds Arise, is a return to an old-school Evil Clown idea with an ensemble comprised of three Evil Clown regulars and four Evil Clown newbies.  It’s a bit unusual to have more newbies than regulars…  Ordinarily, we have no more than one or two new people on a set at once.  It makes for an interesting improvisation dynamic, but it works great when all the players are strong as they are in this instance.  The new people did an amazing job of reacting to the aesthetic problem that I pose to improvisation ensembles at Evil Clown Headquarters, and the result is a very satisfying and very different addition to the catalog.

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

• PEK, 24 May 2024