The Squid's Ear Magazine

Simulacrum

Replacing Reality with Representation

Simulacrum: Replacing Reality with Representation (Evil Clown)

A Metal Chaos Ensemble offshoot featuring PEK, Eric Woods, and Bob Moores, focuses on heightened electronic elements while omitting drums, typically expanding to larger groups; this quintet session included a rhythm section using extensive instrumental doubling across brass, reeds, percussion, and electronics, resulting in a slower-moving yet richly textured exploration.
 

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Personnel:



David Peck (PEK)-clarinet, contralto & contrabass clarinets, alto & tenor saxophones, glissophone, piccolo oboe, English Horn, flute, melodica, soma pipe, theremin with moogerfooger, ms 20, moog subsequent, novation peak, Linnstrument controllers, lfo percolator, lfo violin, daxophone, noise tower, brontosaurus & tank bells, Englephone, danmo, wood blocks, log drums, cow bells, gongs, plate gong, Tibetan bells, [d]ronin, 17 string bass, crotales, glockenspiel, chimes, electric chimes, orchestral chimes, spring & chime rod boxes, array mbira, array mbira, rubber chicken

Bob Moores-Spiphone Les Paul Jr electric guitar played through Zoom multi efx pedal, Electric cornet with electric mouthpiece played through Zoom multi efx pedal and additional efx chain, Donner Essential B1 Analog Bass Synthesizer and Sequencer, Vaux Flores Eyetron pocket synthesizer, Syntha—sette pocket synthesizer, 2 LFO drone generator with eft, Signal generator with eft, Wobble box, Bamboo flute, Animoog Z app on iPad mini, wood flute, gongs, plate gong, wood & temple blocks, log drums, Englephone, danmo, lfo violin, nord stage 3, flex—a—tone, bell tree, orchestral castanet, Tibetan chimes, wind siren, seed pod rattles, psychic mumbling

Eric Woods-analog synthesis, nord stage 3, ms—20, moog subsequent, novation peak, Linnstrument controllers, claves, bells, almglocken, temple bells, balafon, xylophone

Scott Samenfeld-BSX electric upright bass, ghaita, mollenhauer elody electric recorder

Michael Knoblach-Cooperman Bodhran, shakers, devil chasers, split bamboo mallets, wooden clacker, sleigh bells, meinl helix bowls, seed pod shakers, flex—a—tones, vibratones, basket of rocks, wood shakers, basket rattles, metal rattle, palm frond rattles, plastic ball rattle, Fisher Price turtle and bee, Humpty Dumpty toy, Spooky World noise makers, children rattles, castanets, African circumcision rattles, African basket rattles


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Label: Evil Clown
Catalog ID: 9389
Squidco Product Code: 35542

Format: CDR
Condition: New
Released: 2024
Country: USA
Packaging: Digipack
Recorded live at Evil Clown Headquarters, Waltham MA on August 8, 2024 by Joel Simches.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Simulacrum is an offshoot of Metal Chaos Ensemble that was conceived just prior to the Virus shutting things down. The ensemble features 3 core members PEK on all my stuff, Eric Woods on analog synth, and Bob Moores on space trumpet, guitar, and electronics. 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.

Typically, Simulacrum sets tend to have ensembles on the large size, say 6 or 7 players, and that was the plan here. Ordinarily I like to have at least 3 electronics specialists in this band, and we had Eric Woods, Bob Moores and the amazing relatively new arrival Robin Amos scheduled. Unfortunately, Robin had a conflict with some work that had to happen on his house and had to withdraw a few days before the session. Michael Caglianone, one of our star reed players who has performed in many of the Evil Clown ensembles, also had a last second conflict, but with his day gig.

So, we ended up with quintet. Usually, we don't have bass in this band, so another unusual thing here is a rhythm section. Scott and Michael have played together a bunch of times in other settings and did a fine job here. Eric and Bob made a lot of great electronic sounds, and Bob and I played brass and reeds respectively. As usual, there is an enormous amount of doubling from Eric, Bob and me on the percussion and electronic auxiliary instruments. With a smaller unit, the set was a bit more slow moving than usual and has quite a few moments that are rather pretty. Another excellent example of the Evil Clown broad palate improvisation aesthetic at work..."-David Peck, from the liner notes


Artist Biographies

"PEK (aka David Peck) is a multi-instrument improviser who plays all kinds of instruments including saxophones, clarinets, double reeds, percussion, electronics and auxiliary sound making devices of all kinds.

PEK was born in 1964 and started playing clarinet and piano in elementary school. In 7th grade he started saxophones, first on alto, then switching to tenor in high school. He spent 10 years playing in rock bands and studying classical and jazz saxophone with Kurt Heisig in the San Jose CA area before moving to Boston in 1989 to attend Berklee where he studied performance with George Garzone. While Berklee was an excellent place to study harmony, voice training and other important aspects of a conventional formal music training course of study, it was not a very good environment for learning contemporary (or pure) improvisation (apart from his work with George). PEK did find, however, that Boston had a thriving improvisation scene, and it was here that he developed his mature pure improvisation language.

During the 90s, PEK performed with many notable improvisers including Masashi Harada, Glynis Lomon, William Parker, Laurence Cooke, Eric Zinman, Glenn Spearman, Raqib Hassan, Charlie Kohlhase, Steve Norton, Keith Hedger, Mark McGrain, Sydney Smart, Matt Samolis, Martha Ritchey, Larry Roland, Dennis Warren, Yuri Zbitnov, Craig Schildhauer, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Leslie Ross, Rob Bethel, Wayne Rogers, Eric Rosenthal, Taylor Ho Bynum, Tatsuya Nakatani, James Coleman, B'hob Rainey and George Garzone.

PEK met cellist Glynis Lomon when they played together in the Masashi Harada Sextet which existed between 1990 and 1992. They developed a deep musical connection which they continued following the MHS; first with the Leaping Water Trio for a few years and then with the first version of Leap of Faith in 1994. Leap of Faith was very active in Boston from that time until 2001 and went through a series of several core ensembles which always included both PEK and Glynis. Other key Leap of Faith core members during this period were Mark McGrain (trombone), Craig Schildhauer (double bass), Sydney Smart (drums), Yuri Zbitnov (drums) and James Coleman (theremin). Leap of Faith was always a very modular unit with constantly shifting personnel and many different guests. The early Leap of Faith period concluded in 2001 with a dual bill at an excellent room at MIT called Killian Hall with George Garzone's seminal trio the Fringe.

At this time, PEK changed careers for his day gig, returning to college for a computer science degree and beginning to work in the structural engineering industry at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger. He became far too busy to continue the heavy music schedule, and preferring not to do music casually, he entered a long musically dormant period.

Flash forward to early 2014. PEK was a regular mail order customer of Downtown Music Gallery, the premiere specialty shop in Manhattan for free jazz, contemporary classical and other new music. While in New York on SGH business, he went down to DMG and had a lengthy conversation with proprietor Bruce Lee Gallanter about the early Leap of Faith period. He then sent Bruce a package of about 15 CD titles from the 90s and was pleasantly surprised when Bruce managed to sell nearly all of it. This public interest in the old catalog spurred PEK into getting back into performance. He reformed Leap of Faith with Glynis Lomon (cello, voice, aquasonic), Yuri Zbitnov (drums) and newcomer Steve Norton (clarinets and saxophones) and started to record and perform in early 2015.

Now having access to financial resources always absent in the early period, PEK began to accumulate a huge collection of instruments both for himself and also to expand the palate of Leap of Faith and the other projects soon to follow. He acquired new recording equipment and many new saxophones, clarinets, double reeds, metal and wooden percussion instruments, electronic instruments, signal processing equipment and other sound-making devices from many cultures. He revived his old record label, Evil Clown, and created reissues and new releases for much of the early period work by Leap of Faith and many of his other projects to sell at shows, DMG and the internet (around 100 archival titles).

The Arsenal of equipment has a grand purpose: To establish a large scale aesthetic problem to use the instruments to make long form broad palate improvisations with dramatic transformation and development. The very broad palate enables the long improvisations to evolve with very different movements and pronounced development over their length. PEK started the Leap of Faith Orchestra, a greatly expanded Leap of Faith, to achieve this purpose along with a number of smaller ensembles which are sub-units of the full orchestra including String Theory (focusing on orchestral strings), Metal Chaos Ensemble (focusing on metallic percussion), Turbulence (horn players), Mekaniks (electronics) and Chicxulub (space rock). In all, the Evil Clown roster includes over 40 musicians who contribute to one or more of the various projects, with PEK participating in all of them. Leap of Faith has also had some special guests like Steve Swell (trombone), Thomas Heberer (trumpet), Jeremiah Cymerman (clarinet) and Jim Hobbs (alto sax). The Leap of Faith Orchestra happens whenever several of these groups play together at the same time, or the ensemble exceeds 7 or 8 players. The Full Orchestra is a special case discussed below.

The current roster is comprised in part of: - Core Leap of Faith: PEK, Glynis Lomon, Yuri Zbitnov (Steve Norton has since left to go to Graduate School) - Percussion: Andria Nicodemou (vibes), Kevin Dacey (perc), Joe Hartigan (perc), Syd Smart (drums) - Strings: Jane Wang (cello), Clara Kebabian (violin), Tony Leva (bass), Mimi Rabson (violin), Kirsten Lamb (bass), Brendan Higgins (bass), Silvain Castellano (bass), Rob Bethel (cello), Kit Demos (bass), Matt Scutchfield (violin), Helen Sherrah-Davies (violin) - Piano: Eric Zinman, Peter Cassino, Emilio Gonzales - Horns: Dave Harris (tuba, trombone), Charlie Kohlhase (saxes), Bob Moores (trumpet), Sara Honeywell (trombone), Forbes Graham (trumpet), John Baylies (tuba), Dan O'Brien (woodwinds), Zack Bartolomei (woodwinds), Kat Dobbins (trombone), Steve Provizer (trumpet, baritone horn), Matt Samolis (flute) - Electronics: Greg Grinnell, Jason Adams (electric bass, electronics) - Guitar: Dru Wesely, Grant Beale, Chris Florio - Voice: Dei Xhrist

Evil Clown is documenting the ongoing solutions to this aesthetic challenge by creating limited CD editions and digital download albums of every performance and studio session by this array of ensembles. Interested audience can track the development of the grand scale project over the many releases - over 80 albums recorded and released so far between Jan of 2015 and March of 2017. All of the bands are highly modular, changing personnel and instrumentation with each meeting. The result is an enormous amount of music that shares the same fundamental improvisational language but differs from event to event greatly both in sonority (overall sound) and specific detail.

For the full Leap of Faith Orchestra, PEK composes a graphic notation score to guide the improvisation. The full Orchestra is comprised of roughly 20 players from the roster and performs twice a year. Two performances have occurred to date - The Expanding Universe in June of 2016 and Supernovae in November of 2016. Composition for Possible Universes is completed and the work will be performed on May 28, 2017 with another performance (score not yet begun) scheduled for November.

The scores use a device called Frame Notation where written English descriptions of the overall sonority desired and simple graphic symbols are given durations for each player on their part along with direction on when to play and when not to play. The directions are put in little boxes called frames which are arranged on a timeline and are simple enough to be immediately understood by the performers. Horizontal lines, called Duration Bars, extend across the page indicating when each Event (the Frame + the Duration Bar) begins and ends. An Event can be intended for the full ensemble, a defined group within the ensemble (for example, Metal Chaos Ensemble), a custom group (for example, Tubas), or an individual (for example, Andria Feature).

Parts are the full score annotated with Hiliters so that each player's instructions stand out. They can clearly see their individual instructions, but can also see the big picture, enabling far more knowledge about the pending actions of the rest of the ensemble than typical in pure improvisation. The players track the elapsed time on a very large sports clock. There is no melodic, harmonic or rhythmic information specified. This system allows PEK to compose detailed Ensemble Events without having to notate pitches or rhythms which would require significant rehearsal to accurately achieve."

-All About Jazz (https://musicians.allaboutjazz.com/pek)
12/11/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Bob Moores Having spent most of his life flying under the radar working on obscure projects that may some day come to the light of day, trumpeter/guitarist/composer/improviser/artist/photographer/poet/conceptualist Bob Moores has finally started to emerge into the light playing in the free improvisation collective Fable Grazer and through his solo project Resonator.

Having played every kind of music imaginable on trumpet in every kind of setting from classical to funk to blues to R&B to pop punk and metal to jazz, in small and large ensembles, Bob has settled on playing only freely improvised music at this stage of his evolution, both in group situations and as a solo artist. Moores is an exponent of what he calls unschooled primitive coloristic guitar having started to play in earnest with Fable Grazer.

He has been composing music since he was a child and composes and arranges for a variety of ensembles types, instrumentations and genres."

-Evil Clown Website (http://www.giantevilclown.com/bio-bob-moores.html)
12/11/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Originally trained as an electric bassist in funk and jazz in high school, Eric's interest in new music began after studying at Northeastern's Music Technology program, composing acousmatic music on the computer, with an interest in mixed electronic works for live performance, as well as algorithmic and chance operations. While at Northeastern, Eric honed his improvisation skills in the Electronic Music Ensemble, performing pieces such as John Zorn's "Cobra" and Stockhausen's "From the Seven Days".

After college, Eric began playing mandolin as a founding member of the improv collective Fable Grazer. Craving more of the sonic flexibility of his earlier computer music work, Eric was drawn to modular synthesizers in 2012, which has became his primary instrument. He records and performs solo work under the moniker Machine Machine that are largely unedited, improvised recordings. Last year, Eric went on his first nation-wide tour as the synth player in the psychedelic electronic folk trio Vilicon Sally."

-Evil Clown (http://www.evilclown.rocks/bio-eric-woods.html)
12/11/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"I'm a Boston-based musician who plays all kinds of Jazz and improvised music. I grew up in the New York City area (New Jersey) and moved to Boston in 1970. I attended Berklee and have performed around New England ever since.

Music is an avocation for me. I was called early, and I play every day. I get up in the morning and make coffee, feed my cats and pick up an instrument. My practice routine is really a series of meditations. I don't practice, I play. I learned a long time ago that the word play meant exactly that. For me, it isn't work; it is simply the joy of playing. Improvisation requires that you be in the moment, fully present and an open vessel. Performance challenges me to bring that state of being into the public space.

I currently play in a number of groups. My band Muse Stew has been together since 1990 and performs my original compositions as well as arrangements of tunes I like. There are two Muse Stew CDs: Crossings, recorded in 1996 and Muse Stew Live at The Zeitgeist Gallery, recorded in 2004. Muse Stew performs regularly.

I'm also a member of the Sounds of Swing Orchestra which is a 16-piece big band. I've been holding down the bass chair for 35 years. In the 80s and 90s, we had lots of work playing "society" gigs at the Copley Plaza, Parker House, Harvard Club, etc. We played lots of weddings and annual gigs at the Marblehead Yacht Club. As the DJ thing emerged, wedding gigs became scarce. We've transitioned from being a working band to becoming a rehearsal band over the years and only occasionally play in public. The band is my extended family. Many of the best musicians in the Boston area play in the group, and we've got several composers and arrangers, enabling us to have original charts and a huge library that grows all the time.

I also enjoy performing free improvised jazz whenever possible. Recent performances have included a concert of free jazz and poetry at the Arlington Center for the Arts (ACA) this past January, a Muse Stew concert also at ACA this past May, and a couple of performances with Avant Unguarded at the LilyPad in Cambridge in June and July.

In addition to performing and producing shows, I'm a long-time member of Sustainable Arlington and a member of the Arlington Cultural Council. I'm an arts and climate activist who is trying to work to maintain our humanity, dignity and create a sustainable and humane future. All forms of Art are all about self-expression and empowerment. That's why we artists are so dangerous and scary.

I am, therefore I play music!"

-Scott Samenfeld Website (www.musestew.com)
12/11/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Michael Knoblach Percussion---Knoblach has played with Ad Frank, Twitcher, Reg Bloor (from Glenn Branca Ensemble), Cul de Sac, John Fahey, Jon LaMaster's Saturnalia, Neovoxer Ensemble, The Boston Village Gamelan, Kiniwe African Percussion Ensemble, Donald "the junkman" Knaack (ex-John Cage), The Calypso Invaders, The Valhalla Kittens, Emily Grogan, Ted Drozdowski's The Scissormen, The Trojan Ponies, Ken Lovelett, John Amaral, Tim Mungenast, Bill T. Miller and others. He played the New Year's Countdown in Copley Square for Boston, MA for a number of years. He has done soundtrack work for the Troma Films release "Terror Firmer." Michael has had extensive studies in Arabic hand drumming and classical Egyptian tambourine, as well as having studied tabla and North Indian classical music with Ali Akbar Khan and Swapan Chaudhuri. He studied drum set with Gene Piccolo (ex-Jack McDuff, ex-Woody Herman, ex-Glenn Miller Band and Piccolo was a long time student of Ed Thigpen (Oscar Peterson Trio, more...) and Shelly Manne (Stan Kenton, more...)). He is currently playing percussion with Dahlman & Nugent in the band Auddity and is playing washboard and old timey percussion with banjo/fiddle player Nicholas Bogosian, as well as other projects."

-Touhey Gallery (http://www.touhey.com/upcoming.html)
12/11/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Formal Statements 5:12

2. Replacing Reality with Representation 1:09:33

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Jazz
Collective & Free Improvsation
Boston Area Improvisers
New in Improvised Music
Recent Releases and Best Sellers

Search for other titles on the label:
Evil Clown.


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