Squidco Blurb

An offshoot of Metal Chaos Ensemble featuring the core members of that band–David Peck on clarinets, saxophones, flutes, winds & percussion, Eric Woods on analog synth, and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar & electronic–with Joel Simches performing real-time signal processing, in an extended improv concert of acoustics & electronics streamed live from The Evil Clown Headquarters

Squidco Staff

Liner Notes by PEK

The pandemic forced me to focus on solo works for its duration.  It was fun to explore the world of overdubbing and multichannel recording for a year or so, but I am more than ready to resume ensemble playing.  When the hammer came down in March of 2020, Evil Clown had some great momentum recording a number of great projects in a few short months:  Leap of Faith had just recorded Principles of an Open Future for Relative Pitch, Metal Chaos Ensemble had just recorded The Riddle of Steel, Turbulence had just recorded Friction Coefficients, and new ensemble Expanse had just recorded Main Sequence.  All of these projects would have made great music during the last year.  Now that we are coming back to a more normal world and I have started LIVESTREAMING shows from Evil Clown Headquarters, all of these projects are picking up again.

Another new project that was conceived at this time was Simulacrum.  This new band is an offshoot of Metal Chaos Ensemble featuring 3 the core members PEK on all my stuff, Eric Woods on analog synth, and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar, and electronics.  Our debut set, Hyperreality, from a few months back included a few special guests, like many Evil Clown albums do, but the second set, Synesthesia was stripped down to just the core trio.  The basic idea of this band is to increase the amount of electronics, to keep the ancillary percussion and loose the drum set, along with PEK and Bob holding down the horn parts.  Even without the drums, this set tilts more in the noise direction than typical of Metal Chaos Ensemble.

I’m in the early stages of retooling my house to make the studio far more professional and regain some of the living space.  For now, I’m acquiring new equipment and setting it up in the old space so that when the construction is going on next summer, we know the new board and the other new associated gear for planning purposes.  Anyway, the new board is a 48 channel 8 bus SoundCraft, which is an order of magnitude better than the Mackies which I have used for the last few decades.  Joel has helped me to assemble the rig and given me needed advice on what to acquire and how to configure it all.  Joel is my house engineer who records more complicated sessions that have a mix of acoustic and electronic instrumentation for the larger ensembles, and he is tickled pink with the new set-up (especially all his options for signal processing).

This is Joel’s second recording at the board with all the new stuff, and the first set was for Axioms, which is far closer to acoustic in concept and does not utilize many effects from the board.  Anyway, I was excited about the trio setting for this album along with the new recording equipment…  Then, the night before the show I did my Facebook promotion for the YouTube steam, and Albey OnBass reached out to say that he and Jane had not yet returned to New York from their current tip up here and he came to join the set at the last second.  Albey is an amazing bass player who was a regular member of the Cecil Taylor Trio for the last part of Cecil’s life.