Liner Notes by PEK

Simulacrum is an offshoot of Metal Chaos Ensemble that was conceived just prior to the Virus shutting things down.  The ensemble has generally featured 3 core members PEK on all my stuff, Eric Woods on analog synth, and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar, and electronics.  The original idea of this band was to increase the amount of electronics, to keep the ancillary percussion and lose the drum set, along with PEK and Bob holding down the horn roles.  More recently, Bob moved to Maine about 3 hours away and Eric has been less available due to having young children.  The focus on electronics is retained, but the players are more fluid.

Several of the recent sets have featured synth wiz Robin Amos and violinist/guitarist/bassist Jonathan LaMaster who played together in the seminal post-rock band Cul De Sac for a decade. Regular Evil Clown percussionist Michael Knoblach toured with them a few tours and brought them over the first time a few years back for an Expanse set. 

The line up for Modeling Personas includes the three Cul De Sac veterans plus the star Evil Clown horn front line: PEK (that’s me), Michael Caglianone, and John Fugarino.  Michael, John and I have been playing a lot together the last few years, appearing together in basically all of the Evil Clown Ensembles and recently as an acoustic trio with a comparatively limited palette at the Holyoke Media Center (https://studio.youtube.com/video/Tp_auvpTVMY/edit).  Michael recently got a bass clarinet, and it makes its first appearance on this set, so there is a lot of good clarinet texture between the two that he used and the four that I used.  John used the French horn quite a lot and has recently been bringing a valve trombone in addition to the tenor trombone, trumpets and flugel.  When all the horn players double so many different wind instruments the permutations of horns produce an astonishing variety of sonority.

This is a solid set from Simulacrum which shows the overarching concept of this unit transcends the original core lineup since Bob and Eric are both absent. The electronics are superb from Robin. The horn section was super tight and so was the rhythm section. We all did a lot of doubling on the auxiliary instruments in the studio including the synth bank, so there is often more electronics present than just the from Robin… Great development and sonority all the way though.

Anyway, I like this set, and I bet you will too.

PEK Out – 9/17/2025