Excerpt From Liner Notes by PEK

“… I created these synth heavy ableton accompaniment tracks for this session which is the most synth oriented Metal Chaos Ensemble session to date. Not only did we have the mix, but also the synths used to created it plus the modular analog synth of Eric Woods, and new laptop synthesis from Evil Clown regular Bob Moores. Rounding out the session are myself on clarinets, saxophones + misc, Evil Clown percussion maestro Yuri Zbitnov and the return of the amazing bassist Alby onBass who is using the electric upright bass for this set.”

Liner Notes by PEK

Metal Chaos Ensemble was formed in early 2015 by PEK and Yuri Zbitnov as a working project to explore chaotic rhythms on metallic instruments. I had started to amass the Evil Clown Arsenal of percussion, electronic and wind instruments and we needed a workshop to develop this universe of sounds for the Leap of Faith Orchestra. It was immediately obvious that Metal Chaos Ensemble had a sound to itself and over the last three years has been one of the most prolific Evil Clown ensembles. We have produced a bunch of albums covering a wide range of sonority sets, but always with the presence of Gongs, chimes, glockenspiel, Tibetan Bowls and many other metallic sounds and the horns of PEK. All Metal Chaos Ensemble sessions include at least myself and Yuri, along with a whole bunch of different guests.

For around 2 years now, I have been using the Ableton software to create electronic mixes which we use in several of the bands as an accompaniment track. In performance, I ride the fader from off to very present, but most of the time more to the background. Raw samples are taken from the Evil Clown Catalog and also specially recorded at Evil Clown Headquarters with instruments drawn from the Evil Clown arsenal. I then use Adobe Audition to process the samples and finally Ableton to assemble a timeline and create a mix. Most of the more recent MCE sessions use one of these mixes.

I have had a bunch of different stages in the organization of the Ableton mix. This particular mix has samples from some of the newest instruments in the Evil Clown Arsenal: The ARP Odessey and the EWI5000 – a remake of a classic analog synth and a state of the art wind controller. The other sample track was performed on the moog subsequent37. I made three 80 minute mixes from these synthesizer sample tracks and then did a second mix with these and about 12 others previously made for other sessions. I observed something new, when transforming the samples by stretching or compressing and raising or lowering the pitch, in that these synthesized samples, which have a very clean machine generated sound, behave differently under transformation that the samples I have used lots of in the past created from acoustic instruments which are rich with harmonics and other complex detail.

I created these synth heavy ableton accompaniment tracks for this session which is the most synth oriented Metal Chaos Ensemble session to date. Not only did we have the mix, but also the synths used to created it plus the modular analog synth of Eric Woods, and new laptop synthesis from Evil Clown regular Bob Moores. Rounding out the session are myself on clarinets, saxophones + misc, Evil Clown percussion maestro Yuri Zbitnov and the return of the amazing bassist Alby onBass who is using the electric upright bass for this set.

PEK 12/9/2018