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  ------ Review by Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery
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  METAL CHAOS ENSEMBLE with PEK / BOB MOORES / ERIC WOODS / MIKE GRUEN / YURI ZBITNOV / JOEL SIMCHES - The Nameless City (Evil Clown 9226; USA) Recorded at Evil Clown Headquarters in August of 2019 and featuring PEK on clarinets, alto & tenor saxes, mussette, game calls, wood flute, odd percussion & recitation; Bob Moores piccolo trumpet, guitar & synth; Eric Woods on analogue synth & gong; Mike Gruen electric bass; Yuri Zbitnov on drums, percussion & recitation and Joel Simches on real time signal processing. Of the more than a half dozen different Leap of Faith offshoot projects, the Metal Chaos Ensemble might the next most prolific with some two dozen discs under their moniker. Aside from the two longtime core members, PEK and Yuri Zbitnov, the more recent ongoing members includes Bob Moores, Eric Woods, Mike Gruen and Joel Simches. The fractal cover art and CD title ‘The Nameless City’, give the appearance of a science fiction like view of an ancient abandoned city. This makes sense since this music captures another time and places, whether fictional or not. When this discs begins, there is a spoken word sci-fi like intro with some soft, swirling electronics and percussion flowing together. When the electric guitar enters it sounds like it could turn into a prog-jam of sorts. Electric bass is a rarity for most Leap of Faith offshoots. Yet here, the bass & drums work their way into a laid back yet rockin’ groove, at least for the first section. Things calm down and then build again slowly with game calls, synth, bells or gongs, throbbing bass and eerie effects. Some folks might wince at some of the spoken word sections which are relatively short yet they seem to fit well with the dark semi-serious atmosphere of the music. Spooky in places but pretty consistently engaging, considering its another 70 minute journey.
  - Bruce Lee Gallanter, DMG
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  Liner Notes by PEK:
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  Metal Chaos Ensemble was formed in early 2015 by PEK and Yuri Zbitnov as a working project to explore chaotic rhythms on metallic instruments. I had started to amass the Evil Clown Arsenal of percussion, electronic and wind instruments and we needed a workshop to develop this universe of sounds for the Leap of Faith Orchestra. It was immediately obvious that Metal Chaos Ensemble had a sound to itself and over the last three years has been one of the most prolific Evil Clown ensembles. We have produced a bunch of albums covering a wide range of sonority sets, but always with the presence of Gongs, chimes, glockenspiel, Tibetan Bowls and many other metallic sounds and the horns of PEK. All Metal Chaos Ensemble sessions include at least myself and Yuri, along with a whole bunch of different guests.
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  MCE has always contained more rock elements that the other Evil Clown projects. This aspect of the project has really come into focus in the sessions over the last year or two. Last May we did three rapid fire sets in 8 days with two different groove-oriented lineups. These sessions are some of the most groove-heavy sets yet, due to the driving bass of newcomer Mike Gruen on Azoth and Basilisk, and the incredible djembe of Moouse Traore on Reverberatory Furnace.
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  This current set is the trio with Mike Gruen plus the modular analog synth of MCE regular Eric Woods and trumpet, guitar and synth from our pal Bob Moores. We now LIVE STREAM to YouTube all of the Evil Clown Headquarters recording sessions. With the help of Joel Simchez at the audio mixing console and Raffi at the video mixing console, we’re pushing a real quality 5 channel Stream!
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  Subscribe to my YouTube for notifications https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClfRlTeeHnSxRsJTkFakiJw/videos)
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  These more groove-oriented sessions are new ground for us. The solid contribution of Mike at the bass chair is really bringing us in a new direction. Make sure you check it out! Not to do so would be a serious mistake.
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  PEK 8/31/2019 ... more
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