Liner Notes by PEK

I formed Turbulence in 2015 as I started to assemble players for the Leap of Faith Orchestra. Turbulence, the extended horn section for the Orchestra (along with guests on other instruments), also records and performs as an independent unit. As if this writing in 2025, we have recorded over 60 albums on Evil Clown with greatly varied ensembles.  All the smaller Evil Clown bands are really more about a general approach, rather than a specific set of musicians.  A session gets credited to Turbulence when it is mostly horn players and the only musician on all of them is me. The sessions range from an early duet with Steve Norton and me (Vortex Generation Mechanisms) to a 5-horn band with bass and two percussionists (Encryption Schemes) to four albums by the side project Turbulence Doom Choir which feature myself, multiple tubas, percussion, electronics, and signal processing and many other configurations.  More recently, the Turbulence Orchestra and Sub-Units project has been performing twice a year in Brattleboro VT.

Troughs is the final Evil Clown performance of 2025 and it is an appropriately strong conclusion to the year and in a way a summary of some of the years major strides…  Evil Clown recorded 37 new albums in 2025 (by Turbulence, Turbulence Orchestra, Turbulence Orchestra & Sub-Units, Expanse, Expanse Percussion Edition, Metal Chaos Ensemble, Leap of Faith, Neurodivergent Orchestra, & Simulacrum) – 35 as LIVESTREAMS from Evil Clown Headquarters and 2 in Live Performance. There were over 50 participants this year in the Evil Clown Roster, but 4 of the key performers are all here: PEK (that’s me), John Fugarino, Michael Caglianone, and Michael Knoblach. I’m on all, of course, John is on 32, Michael C is on 18, and Michael K is on 17. There are many horn players in the Roster, but John, Michael and I have played together either as the entire ensemble, a three horn front line, or part of a larger horn section on 16 of this year’s albums – As a consequence, our improvised interaction has become extraordinarily tight. 

Michael K plays a crazy assortment of hand percussion and unusual found percussion objects from a seated position on the floor, and for some sessions he plays drum set. Usually, our ensemble size is large (6 or more performers) since so many players want to participate, and because I am very interested in the difficult aesthetic problem of large unit pure improvisation. Most of the time, Michael plays from the kitchen due to crowding in the main studio room and for recording reasons to isolate his quieter percussion sounds, but for this set we were all in the main studio space for once.

The sole newbie on this set is clarinetist Kelsey Gallagher. The great tenor saxophonist Bonnie Kane brought her to the August Turbulence Orchestra & Sub-Units performance in Brattleboro VT. She did great, and here appears on her 5^th Evil Clown recording in less than 5 months. It is rare to find clarinet specialists in pure improvisation since most truly accomplished clarinet players are classically trained and few classical players are able to make the leap to improvisation, but Kelsey is definitely one of them. She has big ears and a great voice. On her second performance (which was her first visit to Evil Clown Headquarters) we had a lengthy discussion before the set on my theories about broad palate improvisation and how we leverage the studio and the equipment in it to realize long form improvisations which organically transform through highly varied sonorities over the duration. I have never seen anyone new to these ideas accomplish so much so quickly.

The combination of a small highly seasoned Evil Clown unit with a highly skilled new addition really ended our 2025 season on a high note! I really like this set, and I bet you will too…

PEK 12/16/2025