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.

The Property of Infinite Distances is the third performance by this Expanse Edition with me, Michael, David, Eric and Kelsey. When I have a performance by a new Edition of an ensemble which is very successful, I schedule more sessions to see how it develops over time. It is always a good choice, and in this instance, each time it gets better. Again, the mean dynamic is quieter than typical of most Evil Clown performances, which leaves plenty of space for very quiet and subtle interactions…

Nearly all Evil Clown projects have broad dynamic scope varying from thin and quiet to active and loud within the space of our long 70-minute improvisations.  The goal, after all, is to achieve development by creating transformation through very different sonority over the duration of the work and one easy contributing solution to this problem is to vary the density over time. With most of the bands, the distribution of density trends towards mostly fairly active with occasionally dense and occasionally thin and a little very dense and a little very sparse. The aesthetic problem addressed by this Expanse Edition is more like mostly fairly restrained with some fairly active, a little very active and some very sparse. I also notice a bit more motivic exchange/development in the improvisation than typical, which is a natural result of having two players (Kelsey and David) who come from classical backgrounds.

Moving forward, I will try to schedule this edition of Expanse every 3 or 4 months so we can all see how these ideas develop over the next few years.

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

PEK, 9 September 2026