Liner Notes by PEK

Perturbation’s first session occurred in 2022.  The core unit is PEK and Joel Simches…  Joel is the Evil Clown house engineer who comes to all the recording sessions at Evil Clown Headquarters.  Some of the bands (for example, Metal Chaos Ensemble and Simulacrum) feature Joel’s real time signal processing in addition to his role as the recording engineer. The Perturbations Project steps up Joel’s role to bring his real-time electronic Perturbations of the ensemble performance into greater prominence. Now that the Studio has been updated with new equipment (board and effects) Joel’s Perturbation options have increased and improved. He usually brings a few extra gadgets from his own rig to supplement my supply.

To help feature Joel’s electronic manipulations, we keep the instrumental unit to no more than 3 players.  This set, Higher-Order Terms, is the thirteenth Perturbation Set, and the sixth to feature three of our strongest horn players, me (reeds), Michael Caglianone (reeds), and John Fugarino (brass), while the other 7 earlier Perturbation sets have all had different lineups drawn from the Evil Clown Roster.  All three of us also double the percussion, electronics, electro-acoustic and other instruments from the studio.  The broad palate concept works best when all the players change instruments frequently through the performance, creating a steady flow of transformations across sonorities over the duration. All the Perturbations sets since August 2024 have had this lineup, which has consistently delivered excellent electro-acoustic broad palate improvisations.

Some of these Perturbation performances contain mostly subtle interactions among the instrumentalists and Joel at the Perturbations from the board. This set is not in that category. The playing is energetic and forceful for a lot of it and Joel’s electronic contribution is especially strong and twisted. I swear I heard parades of munchkin aliens, and I have no idea where Joel got those sounds… Also, the mics were hotter than usual. I like a hot mic, since with the headphones I can play the mic as part of the instrument by controlling my presence in the mix with volume and proximity to the mic. It also allows easier use of instruments that are very quiet – there is a great section featuring the bass flute about 45 minutes in for example.  Bass flute is a very quiet horn and while I love its sounds, I use it judicially since I need to watch for a time when the overall volume is very low. Cranking up the mics addresses this issue nicely, but when the ensemble is much bigger (as it generally is), it causes issues with bleeding across microphones, so we don’t record that way most of the time.

The combination of strong deeply connected improvisors with deep broad palette doubling and Joel’s more aggressive than usual Perturbations resulted in an extraordinary improvisation.  With Joel at the controls of the signal processing, we essentially have real-time decision making as a performance unit, and we get the full-time attention of a master engineer on the electronic Perturbations of the instrumental expressions.  I really like this combination of live playing with over-the top live signal processing. Now having addressed this particular aesthetic problem over a dozen times, I can see that this will be an ongoing Evil Clown project with at least several LIVESTREAM’s per year. It will likely be the same lineup of Michael, John and me with Perturbations by Joel each time going forward unless it gets into the book and then one of us needs to withdraw for a conflict or illness etc. In that case, I might decide to just keep duet instrumentalist section, or more likely, I will bring in someone else from the roster as a sub.

I really like this performance, and I bet you will too!!  Check it out…

PEK, 9/2/2026