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 originally 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.  Larger variations of this Simulacrum edition have included Evil Clown star horn players Michael Caglianone and John Fugarino and synthesist Cyrus Shauoul. Replicants, from 18 July 2025, was the first performance to include all seven of us.

For Natural Language Processing, all seven of us made the set for the second time.  It’s always a little unclear until the last second if everyone will show up to most Evil Clown Livestreams, but with this ensemble it is generally even a bit murkier. Cyrus runs a business that created a highly specialized AI, and he is constantly either busy or traveling. When I invite him to a set, he shows if he can, but he does miss some. So, when he shows up, I’m always psyched.

He is great with synthesis, even sound design, which is the hard, technical part, which is understandable since he has a PHD is some technical computer language subject. In fact, when he arrived, he told me that his PHD dissertation’s topic was Natural Language Processing and that he had brought some words along. We set him up a mic and he provided a very interesting set of spoken word interludes that are very different from the spoken words on other Evil Clown Albums.

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 and Cyrus. 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 the synth section… Great development and sonority all the way though.

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

PEK Out – 2/4/2026