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  -----Liner Notes by PEK
  Albey onBass and Jane SpokenWord were associated with Cecil Taylor's final trio. Following Cecil's passing they were in Boston for about a year in 2017-2018 and Albey performed a dozen or so times with Leap of Faith, Metal Chaos Ensemble and Turbulence. In November 2018, Albey and I had been discussing doing a duet, but we decided to include Jane’s poetry as a trio. This new Evil Clown Ensemble we called Axioms, which to me is an apt name for a band which features words - something that most Evil Clown sessions do not.
  .
  There are two definitions:
  1) a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true
  2) a statement or proposition on which an abstractly defined structure is based (mathematics)
  These two meanings bridge the distance between poetic discussion of truths and abstract musical structures.
  .
  A few months later, about a year before the virus, Albey and Jane moved to New Orleans, so the original session from December 2018, Manifestations, had been our only recording to date.
  .
  In July of 2021, Albey and Jane returned to the Northeast, splitting their time between New York and Boston. Albey has performed since then with many Evil Clown Ensembles, and this newest Axioms recording is the 7th set. Glynis Lomon, cellist from Leap of Faith has been on most of the newer Axioms recordings, so the most common unit is quartet.
  .
  Axioms is fundamentally different from the other Evil Clown Ensembles since it features Jane’s poetry – Jane and Albey have performed many times together along with many notable players from the free improvisation scene. So, Axioms is really the Evil Clown setting for Jane and Albey’s ongoing poetry project.
  .
  This is the first Axioms set since the studio upgrades have been finished at Evil Clown. With only 4 performers and no drum set, there was much more room than we had in the old studio space. We were able to set up in a circle facing each other, with the auxiliary instruments mounted to the walls around the perimeter. The new space is really fantastic, and I think the excitement of our first performance in the new space really shines through…
  .
  We had plenty of time for the setup/sound check for once, and we played a very nice short piece as a warmup/sound check which was recorded. Typically, Evil Clown recordings run an hour and 10 minutes which we track on a large sports clock. This time, I’m including the extra short piece as well.
  .
  This is a terrific performance of improvisation with poetry… I really like this set and I bet you will also!
  .
  PEK – 23 February 2023
  -------------------
  YouTube Notes for Overture
  .
  Overture – 4:07
  . Jane SpokenWord - poetry, spoken word
  . PEK - alto saxophone
  . Glynis Lomon – cello, voice
  . Albey OnBass - fretless bass guitar
  . Joel Simches - live to 2-track recording, real-time signal processing
  .
  It's very unusual for any album by any of the Evil Clown Ensembles to contain short tracks or multiple tracks, especially when the recording is from a YouTube Livestream from Evil Clown Headquarters. The aesthetic problem that I pose to the improvisors is to play for an hour and ten minutes continuously. I get a recording that always fits on a CD and which is allowed to breathe and develop organically over the long duration. I also only need one title per album which is kind of important when you release 30 albums a year…
  .
  As I have built up the new studio equipment into a much more professional recording environment, I have typically relied on house engineer Joel Simches to run the live-to-2-track mix that is audio recorded and simultaneously sent to YouTube broadcast. In the early history of Evil Clown, and still for live performance in a venue, I always record on a portable Zoom digital recorder with a small preamp and 2 wide diaphragm condenser mics – super easy to set up and little or no soundcheck is required. The studio setup leverages at least 50 channels generally and we give Joel as much time as we can for a soundcheck after setup and before the broadcast starts.
  .
  YouTube broadcasting is a hybrid of live performance (since there is a live internet audience) and a traditional studio recording (where there is no pressure brought by a scheduled start time). So generally, we have a soundcheck, but the time allowed is constrained by how early we are ready compared to the published start of the set. Most of the time, the soundcheck proceeds in fits and starts and contains sounds of the conversation in the room. For this particular set, for once, we played a short, focused improvisation which Joel did capture on the pre-roll recording he always makes.
  .
  Immediately after the piece, Albey asked, “Was it recorded?”. Happily, the answer is yes, the recording is good, and the length of the piece allowed it to go on the CD as an opener (an “Overture”). We don’t run video during the soundcheck, so I assembled a sequence of still photographs from the 70-minute Abstract Intensions set performed immediately afterwards…
  .
  I really like this unusual short work, and I bet you will too!!
  .
  PEK, 25 February 2023 ... more
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• Killer quartet edition of the Evil Clown poetry project featuring Jane SpokenWord and Albey OnBass

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