"Paul Klee, a Balloon, the Moon, Music and Me" on BBC iPlayer, and new Ergo Phizmiz website

For the next five days you can stream the new Ergo Phizmiz radio-art piece "Paul Klee, a Balloon, the Moon, Music and Me" on BBC iPlayer. Direct link to listen.

And why not head over to the swish and swanky new Ergo Phizmiz website, now at the new address of www.ergophizmiz.net

Paul Klee, A Balloon, The Moon, Music and Me - On BBC Radio 3 - December 5th 09

BROADCASTING 2130 GMT, on BBC Radio 3, Saturday December 5th 2009, and on BBC iPlayer for one week after broadcast.

On BBC Radio 3's Between The Ears, "Paul Klee, A Balloon, The Moon, Music and Me"...

A fantastical encounter with Swiss painter Paul Klee, in an imaginary Klee-world of twittering machines and dream landscapes, singing colour polyphony and scribbling violin. Composer and writer Ergo Phizmiz wanders through Klee's paintings in the company of their creator, evoking their vivid colours and whimsical humour in intricately composed soundscapes. Klee takes Ergo on a hot-air balloon ride which, like a magic carpet, miraculously flies them to Tunisia, the land where he 'became a painter'. Their voyage also passes through paintings of strange gardens, mountain carnivals, and abstract colour gradations, before they finally ascend to the moon, a dream-world populated by lunar monkeys, peculiar birds and trees bulging with seeping paint.

This programme’s music and sound-design was entirely composed by Ergo Phizmiz, who also wrote the script and plays himself. The role of Paul Klee is taken by Felix Kubin, also a prolific composer and radio-play maker, who lives in Germany, and Klee's violin is performed by composer John Matthias, winner of the 2008 PRS New Music Award and collaborator with artists including Radiohead, Coldcut and Matthew Herbert.

Go to Between The Ears

Ergo Phizmiz at The Song Is You 09 Festival, Warsaw

New live set in Warsaw, and improvisation with Justin Bond, of the delightful Kiki & Herb, November 21 2009. Here is more information.

Outtakes from "The Snow Flea"

This music consists of unused segments composed for "The Snow Flea", a puppet-opera by Patrick Sims with music by Ergo Phizmiz, performed by Buchinger's Boot Marionettes (www.buchingersboot.com).

"The Snow Flea" premiered on November 3rd, 2009, at Theatre Massalia, Marseilles

Composed, Performed & Produced by Ergo Phizmiz

Download it free by clicking here.

"The Snow Flea" - Premiere in Marseille

Opening on November 3rd at Theatre Massalia, Marseille, Buchinger's Boot Marionettes present "La Puce de Neige" ("The Snow Flea"), a fantastical puppet-opera by Patrick Sims, with original musical score by Ergo Phizmiz.

From Buchinger's Boot:

"At the present day magnetic North Pole, a forever wandering location, the tiny snow flea, Keruguq, is hiding out from Baron Tugar Von Torngark, a mean flea circus ringmaster who wants to turn Keruguq into an ice cream preservative. The Baron, accompanied by his sidekick, Wayne, a greasy French-fry eating seagull, operate a foul ice cream industry powered by the fleas from his circus.

Meanwhile, an old, hiccoughing Inuit shaman named Simmiktartoq, vows to protect Keruguq and teaches his over-imaginative children how to “eat the weather”. Keruguq gets lost from his home when he falls down a great opening in the earth and suddenly finds himself at the other end of the world - in the Antarctic and desperate to return. Along the way home he meets a host of eccentric animals, insects and micro-organisms who help him on his return, sharing meals, adventures and stories. He eventually returns back to the magnetic North Pole and things have turned upside down. Transforming robots and Inuit totem pole dance, costumed children fly, fleas, worms, lice and mosquitoes have a jazz band jam session under the northern lights! The snow flea is a story of science fiction fantasy mixed with Stone Age mythology and real geophysical anomalies! Part flea circus, part ancient Inuit ice cream ceremony, a tragic-comedy puppet opera for children of all ages!"

Ergo Phizmiz's rich and imagistic score is created from acoustic and electronic instrumentation, built around samples and references to Inuit folk music, Arctic field-recordings, circus music, and 19th century orchestral music.

Ergo Phizmiz Rock'N'Roll Machine : Dadaphone - Out Now on the Free Music Archive

Continuing in the long line of acclaimed albums of covers and reinventions of pop music by Ergo Phizmiz comes "Dadaphone", in the new incarnation of the Rock'N'Roll Machine.






In 2003 Ergo very cruelly upset the Aphex Twin fan community with his reinventions of the music of Richard D. James for acoustic and toy instruments, incidentally a record that the James in question was rather fond of.

2004 saw the release of Ergo's cover of the entirety of the Velvet Underground's "White Light / White Heat" album, into a semi-mechanical behemoth of toys, tinny synths and banjoes, to both whistles and boos across the world.

By 2005 and the album "Arff and Beef" he had turned his attention to R & B classics of the present day, wherein Beyonce, Timberlake, Missy, et al, were given the Phizmiz treatment.

After a hiatus from cover versions Ergo returned with his band The Midnight Florists in tow for the whacked-out opus "Now That's What We Pump at the Party", in which dancefloor fillers of the 90s and noughties were transformed into multilayered slabs of lo-fi rhythmic goodness gracious me.

And now ...... the Ergo Phizmiz Rock'N'Roll Machine brings you "Dadaphone", a huge and savage record of booms and bangs, in which Ergo deals with the widest range of covers yet, from the intense merging of three or four different cover versions in album opener "The Bomb", to the slow and very loud rock'n'roll waltz version of the Pet Shop Boys "It's a Sin", to the intensive ludicrous funkpunk workout of "Slap My Bass Up" (a simultaneous cover of two different songs by The Prodigy, with some of the Bucketheads and Europe's "Final Countdown" thrown in). The record is created in collaboration with Ergo's compadre The Travelling Mongoose, who grounds the record into a solid earthy lump of pop yum.

This is the most diverse and considered of all the Ergo Phizmiz covers projects so far, as much a party record as an aesthetic statement. We're quite sure that, as is par for the course with this kind of project now, some people will certainly find something to be wildly offended about and feel inclined to post aggressive messages on the internet about just what a terrible record it is and how talentless and mindless Ergo is.

However for those of you with smiles in your hearts, switch on, turn it up, put on your disco lights, and take a trip through the past 30 years or so of pop music with Ergo Phizmiz as your host.

Direct link to the record http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Ergo_Phizmiz_RockNRoll_Machine/Dadaphone/

Something imminent....

Let's get ready to Let's get ready to Let's get ready to Rhumba
(Let's get ready to Rhumba)
(Let's get ready to Rhumba)
Watch us wreck the floor
Watch us wreck the floor
Watch us wreck the floor
Rhumba!

Straight up proven
We can get you groovin'
This dance is boomin'
It ain't no hype

Watch us wreck the floor
Watch us wreck the floor
Rhumba!

Let's get ready to Rhumba
Let's get ready to Rhumba
Get ready get steady and Rhumba
Everybody Rhumba!

Sit back cracker jack
Don't take no flack
Dance in time
To the rhythm of the track
I'm Ergo
I'm Mongoose

A duo
A twosome
So many moves
We're frightened to use them
So many moves
We'll keep them in stores
We've even got them
Comin' out of our pores
Your Father
Your Mother
Your Sister
Your Brother
Everyone's gotta be a Rhumba lover

Give us the motivation
We can cause a sensation
Give us the aspiration
We can cause a sensation
Give us girls top speed
Cause the girls stampede
Stylin' smilin' everybody butt-whilin'

Let's get ready to Rhumba
Let's get ready to Rhumba
Get ready get steady and Rhumba
Everybody Rhumba
Let's get ready to Rhumba

Partners in pants
With a thrill for romance
An evening for for us
Has to end in a dance
Raw and pure like sushi
Don't try to do me
Use me or even try to sue me

We lay down the law
We're quick on the draw
We played it
We made it
The rest don't score
No jokes No messin'
We teach you a lesson
A state of confusion
To keep you all guessin'

Freakin' it sweatin' it
Bustin' the floor
Slammin' it jammin' it
Rhumba somemore

Let's get ready to Rhumba
Let's get ready to Rhumba
Get ready get steady and Rhumba
Everybody Rhumba!

Watch us wreck the floor
Watch us wreck the floor
Rhumba!
(Let's get ready to Rhumba)
(Let's get ready to Rhumba)
Watch us wreck the floor
Watch us wreck the floor
Watch us wreck the floor
Rhumba!