Sunday 23 February 2014

ERGO PHIZMIZ 2014 TOUR

Photograph by Claire Shovelton

He is a burst of imagination, colour and noise” - The New Statesman

We can't decide whether he's the new Viv Stanshall, a young Eno, a British Zappa, or a replacement for Frank Sidebottom (RIP)” - The Guardian

He's like the grandma-gobbling wold in Little Red Riding Hood, swallowing down the entire world, all the better to heave it back up in your face” - The Wire Magazine

The Emperor of Music!” - Tom Ravenscroft (BBC 6Music)

Mad, but mesmerising” - The Times

One of the most inventive composers around” - BBC Radio 3

A truly English original who we should cherish deeply” - Sound Projector Magazine

Songwriter, Radio Producer, Collagist, Opera composer, and Film maker Ergo Phizmiz has developed a reputation as one of the most consistently inventive, entertaining and prolific artists working today.

His wildly unpredictable output has included the 15 hour sound odyssey “The Faust Cycle” (described as “the most ambitious music project of the 21st century”), “M: 1000 Year Mix” (a mash-up of a millennium), award-winning radio-plays for broadcasts across Europe, and his unique, home-made operas on subjects as diverse as the death by demonism of broadcaster Chris Evans, a late flowering love-affair of Gala Dali, the history of yodelling, an adaptation of a novel by Flann O'Brien, and a visualisation of the entire internet playing a game with itself.

He is also notorious for his cover versions of other artists, including the Velvet Underground, Beyonce, Missy Elliott, the Pet Shop Boys, and Aphex Twin, who listened, perplexed, slowly fathoming out his material from Ergo's Amish-Party sound.

For his 2014 tour Ergo will present intimate, solo performances of music, miniature theatre, puppetry, and spoken-word, drawing upon his back catalogue whilst simultaneously inventing new material, and covering, in his own inimitable way, all your favourite hit songs from the 1920s to the present.

His set is rusty and unrehearsed, yet he has a certain theatrical charm that makes his crowd smile, in whimsical confusion if not genuine joy....Everything about him is shambolic, from his creased shirt to his arrangement of instruments. This would be annoying coming from any other artist, yet Phizmiz manages to create a laid-back environment; the atmosphere is more like having a cuppa with a close friend rather than giving a performance.” - The Upcoming magazine, on Ergo Phizmiz live at Rough Trade

Interested? Course you are. Contact ergophizmizbookings@gmail.com


In the meantime, while away the time with a beverage of your choice and the Ergo Phizmiz 2008-2014 Concert Film:




And a specially cooked mix for the 2014 tour of ERGO'S FAVOURITE ERGOS ...




Tour dates to be announced soon...

Tuesday 18 February 2014

The Carnival in the Mirror Marches Into The Sea - Repeat broadcast on Deutschlandradiokultur


Deutschlandradiokultur are repeat broadcasting Ergo Phizmiz's 2011 30 minute radio-collage work "The Carnival in the Mirror Marches Into The Sea", next to a 20 minute edited version of the 2012 piece "Conversations With Birds". Listen here, at 0.05am (German time) on the morning between 27/28 February.

"The carnival is warming. Costumes rustle, commentators mutter in their microphones, glasses are filled and emptied. As an unheard sound procession on the audience begins overtake. 

Surreal acoustic natures transform into and through each other, pianos squirt their guts, dead carousels come to life, and the audience is increasingly in ecstasy."

The History of the Click Track


Broadcasting March 8th on WDR3, Germany, and online "The History of the Click Track", a 50 minute music documentary by Ergo Phizmiz.

"Because music in society is now so omnipresent as 'background music', and you can thank Erik Satie for that, and because the vast majority of music today created by corporations is recorded using click-tracks, it is possible to look at the click-track as an invisible yet omnipresent force in all our lives."



Sunday 16 February 2014

MUMBO JAMBO: Four Electronic Pieces


Ergo Phizmiz presents MUMBO JAMBO, four new slices of electronic collage music. Games with modular composition, swollen melody, and badly behaved rhythms.




Including samples of Jane Saunders, Simon Hartung & Amie Willingale Trio, W.A. Mozart, Morton Subotnick, DJ Pierre, Conlon Nancarrow, Pitman's Gramophone Course of Typewriter Keyboard Instruction, Georges Antheil, Erik Satie, Carl Stalling, Simon Mathewson, Siegfried Wendel, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Mieko Somi, Ennio Morricone, Johann Strauss II, Krimanchuli Orera, J.S. Bach, Youtube Funk Drumming Lessons, The Bangles.

Cover photo by the marvellous Caroline Stupnicka, taken at IF4 The End is NYE, Bridport.

And....
If you enjoy this, dip into other pieces by Ergo Phizmiz. Tell your friends. If you like, and have it to spare, and would like to keep hearing such dulcet tones as these, donate some money here. Because we keep running out of the stuff. We know you do too. But, yer know.....

Wednesday 12 February 2014

Ergo Phizmiz Shoots Peas on WFMU - Archive


You can listen to the archive (and see the playlist) of Ergo Phizmiz Shoots Peas on WFMU, on Do Or DIY with People Like Us, HERE.

Monday 3 February 2014

Ergo Phizmiz Shoots Peas on WFMU

We are delighted to have been cordially invited to shoot peas on WFMU.



Ergo Phizmiz Shoots Peas 
Monday, February 10th, 7pm - 8pm
on Do or DIY with People Like Us 

Ergo Phizmiz takes us on a magical mystery tour into the workings of the world of his Wild West dream odyssey "PEASHOOT", which opens in August 2014 at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival, London. Expect an artist's notebook falling to pieces, 1920s English versions of Cowboy tunes, a yodelling extravaganza, Jodorowsky waltzing with Morricone, thunder, lightning, rain and Marlene Dietrich.