"Fulcanelli's Shoes" and "Music From The Shoes of Fulcanelli" out now on Headphonica

Reconsider your histories. We live in an age of holocaust deniers and the Da Vinci Code, the information age has become the age of fabricating the past. Reality has become something malleable, flexible to the needs and whims of whomever happens to be recalling what has already been.

“Fulcanelli’s Shoes” is a response of sorts to this cultural phenomenon, by artist, composer and writer Ergo Phizmiz. Weaving a tale with one foot paddling in truth, and the other firmly embedded in lies, the piece presents a rewritten cultural history of the 20th century, presenting the relationship between the artistic and alchemical worlds at the beginning of the century as the catalyst for the creative, scientific and political revolutions of the proceeding times.

Discover how Jean Cocteau could travel in time; the secrets of the Large Hadron Collider; hear a genuine alchemical transmutation of base metal into gold; find out how anagrams built the universe; learn how to fix anything that is broken …..

Part lecture, part opera, part documentary, this is a uniquely 21st century artwork, bringing together strands of forms into a unified but scattershot form. Collaborating with film-maker Martha Moopette and performer Vulnavia Vanity, Ergo Phizmiz has created a truly experimental piece of anti-art, with the feel of something akin to being kicked in the face with a Ferrero Rocher boot.

Recorded live at Soundart Radio, Dartington, UK, February 5th 2011.

Written, Composed, Narrated & Produced by ERGO PHIZMIZ

Shadow-Puppets, Animation, Video editing, Consultancy by MARTHA MOOPETTE

Music based on themes by
ERIK SATIE
CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS
CLAUDE DEBUSSY
MAURICE RAVEL
CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI
EDVARD GRIEG
FRANCIS POULENC
IGOR STRAVINSKY
GIOVANNIA BATTISTA PERGOLESI
GEORGES AURIC

With film extracts from
JEAN COCTEAU
KAREL ZEMAN
HANS RICHTER
JOSEF VON BAKY
MICHAEL POWELL & EMERIC PRESSBURGER
SERGEI EISENSTEIN
JACQUES TATI
ORSON WELLES
ALEXANDER CALDER
FERNAND LEGER

* Used without permission, but lots of respect

“Barbette” performed by VULNAVIA VANITY

Fulcanelli’s Feminity performed by MARTHA MOOPETTE

Sarangi performed by AMIE WILLINGALE

Foley contributions from THE TRAVELLING MONGOOSE

Mycology photographs by TRAVIS NOBLES

Live sound-engineering and introduction by MONKTON WYLDE

“The Man With The Glass Nose” and “The Flat and Round Painter”

Written by KURT SCHWITTERS

Translated by JACK ZIPES

* With the kind permission of Jack Zipes at Princeton University Press

Extracts from the Ursonate by KURT SCHWITTERS

to download the entire album [mp3 & artwork, zip] click >>> here <<<>>> here <<<>>> here <<<

to download the entire piece [hplive012 + hpcd088 + video.mp4] click >>> here <<<