Leap of Faith
Archival Period (1994 to 2001)
The Fucked up Circus Comes to Town
2023 Note by PEK – Sparkles’ Origin Story
The Fucked-Up Circus Comes to Town marks the arrival of the Evil Clown Icon, Sparkles the Giant Evil Clown. The session was one of a half dozen or so Leap of Faith core unit sets that we did at Yuri’s Haus in Jamaica Plain while we prepared for Leap of Faith vs. the Fringe in 2001. A few minutes before the work’s conclusion, there was a brief section which sounded vaguely like crazy circus music to me while we were performing it. After the conclusion, I said, “The Fucked-Up Circus Comes to Town” which got on the recording. Obviously, that became the title of the piece. Having this Title, I then needed an image that fit and the usual fractal images I was using for artwork wouldn’t do. My Housemate, Raffi, is a great artist and we discussed what such a circus would look like and decided that there would be a Giant Evil Clown rampaging through a circus squishing the circus attendees while being oblivious to their plight. After Raffi completed the digital painting, we named the Clown Sparkles and the painting Sparkles the Giant Evil Clown. For me, Sparkles is a metaphor for chaos, and the perfect symbol for the Evil Clown brand. The music of Leap of Faith and all the other ensembles is chaotic, not in the usual meaning, but in the scientific meaning of complex chaotic systems where many elements exist and affect each other and in combination create formal structure as an emergent property. Fractals are also objects of Chaos Theory, so it all fits together nice and tight.
Excerpt From Bruce Lee Gallanter Review
“… The music moves from sparse to gnarly to very intense, free yet somehow connected. At times, it sounds like a conversation between aliens or even animals (for the occasional shriek), but it does make sense once you get used to it.…”
The Fucked-Up Circus Comes to Town:
Leap of Faith
Yuri’s Haus ‐ 14 December 2000
1) The Fucked up Circus Comes to Town ‐ 1:03:15
PEK – clarinets, saxophones, bassoon, voice
Glynis Lomon – cello, voice
Yuri Zbitnov – percussion, voice
Review by Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
LEAP OF FAITH [PEK/GLYNIS LOMON et al] – The Fucked Up Circus Comes To Town (Evil Clown 07; USA) Leap of Faith is a longtime Cambridge, Mass-area based ensemble with more than a dozen self-produced CDs. the main trio, found here, is Dave ‘PEK’ Peck on saxes, clarinets & bassoon, Glynis Lomon on cello & voice and Yuri Zbitnov on percussion. If you haven’t heard of any of the members here, you are not alone since I only know Ms. Lomon from her work on the last couple of discs with Bill Dixon. Dave Peck is a longtime, faithful customer of DMG, and he was the one that provided us with some dozen or so discs from Leap of Faith. This disc was released in 2001 and unlike most of the other discs from LoF, this one consists of just one long 63+ minute piece.
The F*cked Up Circus Comes to Town’ does have a drawing of an evil clown on the cover and it is no doubt a rather disturbing title to this disc. I have a particular fondness for this trio since they work so well ogether and even after reviewing six discs so far, I am eager for more. The balance of the reeds (mostly clarinets, bassoon or bari sax), cello and percussion is just right. The music moves from sparse to gnarly to very intense, free yet somehow connected. At times, it sounds like a conversation between aliens or even animals (for the occasional shriek), but it does make sense once you get used to it. PEK’s twisted reeds and Ms. Lomon’s cello seem to be coming from a similar place, often bending their notes around one another or together. At times, this music is somewhat disorienting. Mostly it is fascinating as well.
