Ergo Phizmiz Trio UK Mini Tour February 2013

Ergo Phizmiz will be playing a small smackerel of live dates in the UK as a three piece band, performing music from "Eleven Songs", "Things to Do & Make", cover versions, golden oldies, and his next, work-in-progress, songwriting album.

The band will consist of Ergo Phizmiz, plus Iain Chambers (of Angela Valid), and long-time collaborator The Travelling Mongoose.

Ergo Phizmiz Trio UK Dates February 2013

16th - Warwick Arts Centre
20th - Powerlunches, Hackney
24th - Islington Mill, Salford

Music for Merz & Barn Vs Opera for Mills & Boon

Recorded live at Cafe Oto, London, in July 2012, "Music for Merz & Barn vs Opera for Mills & Boon" imagines a boxing match of aesthetics at the end of the universe, refereed by Marlene Dietrich.



Contributors to the boxing match are: Kurt Schwitters "Ursonate", field-recordings from the Elterwater Merzbarn, the Marlene Dietrich song "Lili Marlene", extracts from Mills & Boon novels, Russian church bells, Monteverdi's "Combattimento di Tancredi", and Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time".

Ergo performed on voice, piano, music-box, glass, laptop, turntable. He also threw shapes. What else would you expect?

The performance evening was curated by Discrepant.net

Ergo Phizmiz with Alessandro Bosetti, Lula, Maciej Cieślak, Julia Ziętek, and DJ Lenar play Robert Ashley's "Purposeful Lady, Slow Afternoon" - NEW CD Out now

Queen Ergo Phizmiz the 1st of England is delighted to announce this new, handsomely packaged CD release on Populista, a division of Bolt Records curated by Michal Libera.

Comprising a live recording made in Warsaw during September 2011, a 20 minute interpretation of Robert Ashley's disturbing piece, interleaved with cut-ups of Michael Winner's "Winner's Dinners" column.

Created in collaboration with  Alessandro Bosetti, Lula, Maciej Cieślak, Julia Ziętek, and DJ Lenar.

A limited number will be available to buy shortly through ergophizmiz.net ... if you just can't wait, you can order the CD at Monotype Records.

Populista is a brilliant series of releases, and every installment of the series is highly recommended. If you want Costes performing the Marquis de Sade, Bernard Schutz & Reinhold Scheindl performing Schumann, or Rinus Van Alabeek performing Luc Ferrari, then this is the place to get them.

IF - An Evening of Experimental Entertainment in a Living Room

The first IF event took place on May 17th 2012 at Sara's house in Bridport. The above video is clips from the evening's festivities. It was, indeed, a party.


The event featured Greater Than or Equal To, Vulnavia Vanity, Rob Lee, Ergo Phizmiz, Dan Williams, Elvis Herod, and Oblivian Substanshall.


More parties soon....


If you would like us to bring a noisy and naughty party to your house, get in touch....

Elvis Herod & Ergo Phizmiz Dance to the Bells - New performance for 2012

A 12 hour durational performance from Elvis Herod & Ergo Phizmiz, for performance festivals, social interjections, private amusements, and community events.

Elvis & Ergo will arrive in your town attired beautifully with a ramshackle formality and sartorial elegance, and from 6am until 6pm will stand in the vicinity of your local church, interpreting the ringing of the church bells through the art of rhythmic movement, a form in which Elvis & Ergo are both acknowledged masters.

(One only has to discover these two gentlemen tearing up a dance floor in the Slug & Lettuce throwing Cubist disco shapes to realise this.)

Performances may also include special guests....

This long feast of wizard-moves and fancy footwork is available for booking now.

Contact ergophizmiz at gmail dot com with details of your local town and local church.

And just to get you in the mood, here's Ergo Phizmiz, Oblivian Substanshall, and Martha Moopette dancing to ABBA.

Ergo Phizmiz Live at the Beach & Barnicott, Bridport

That's right, a live show round the corner from his living room, Mr Phizmiz will sing songs and tell tall tales in the Beach & Barnicott, Bridport....

Ergo Phizmiz Dates - Oct - Dec 2011

Greetings from the realms of chaos. Lots of things happening in the coming months...

04/10/11
"Disappearing Boxes" broadcast on Deutschland Radio Kultur (repeat of the WDR3 broadcast from July)

06/10/11
"The Third Policeman" live at the Kazimier, Liverpool, organised by UpitUp Records.

09/10/11
"The Third Policeman" live at The Waiting Room, Eaglescliffe

15/10/11
Ergo Phizmiz live pop & disco van show, at Serralves Museum of Art, Porto, Portugal

23/10/11
Release of Ergo Phizmiz / R. Stevie-Moore 7" single "Food & War" on Care in the Community Recordings

06/11/11
"The Third Policeman" live at Musicport Festival, Bridlington

08/11/11
Ergo Phizmiz live session on Marc Riley, BBC6 Music

09/11/11 and 10/11/11
"The Third Policeman" live at The Cube, Bristol, organised by Qujunktions

11/11/11
Premiere broadcast of "The Carnival in the Mirror Marches Into the Sea", a new 30 minute radio piece, on Deutschland Radio Kultur

25/11/11, 26/11/11 and 27/11/11
"The Third Policeman" live at Worm, Rotterdam

09/12/11
"The Third Policeman" live (and premiere broadcast) at Soundart Radio, Dartington

10/12/11
"The Third Policeman" and Howtosayto live at Bridport Arts Centre

Howtosayto @ Bridport Arts Centre

Howtosayto? One would expect this query to have a simple, one-dimensional solution. Life is, however, rarely so straightforward, and set to wreak the freshly odoured havoc of uber simple anti-simplicity will be a flock of artists, writers, thieves, raconteurs, chefs, composers, charlatans and burlesque dancers taking over Bridport Arts Centre on 12th March, 2011.

Showcasing work by creatives existing outside the fairly contemptible rotten gammon stench of the art and music industry/world, Howtosayto will present an evening of delights for your aural-retinal palates to savour like strawberries with sugar on a Summer's morning.

Baked in an immense pan by internationally acclaimed Dadachefs Ergo Phizmiz & Martha Moopette, the evening is a luxurious casserole of ingredients from across the UK, set to sizzle with world spices and just a dash of arsenic.

The sartorial elegance of Vulnavia Vanity will present tasteful slices of ukulele uberpop. Master Professor of Surrealism Oblivian Substanshall will fill your wanting mouths with spoken-word odysseys from the depths of Edward Lear's oven. Future-anti-pop-supergroup Angela Valid present a wordless cookbook of shatters and rattles, like a heavenly kitchen hurtling through space. Eleanor Davis will put a viola and her mouth into a pan, let them gently simmer, and see what comes out. Ergo Phizmiz will perform his new piece "Fulcanelli's Shoes", which includes no cooking but plenty of time-travel and a picture of Simon Cowell looking like a murderer.

The evening will also showcase some of the cream of contemporary film-making, including music videos and installations by the multi-award winning Martha Moopette, "Process No 18" by Phil Lane, a Duckumentary by Alexander Jones, and the UK premiere screening of the film "Slitscan Carnival" by Carl Rosendahl, one of the founders of renowned animation studio Dreamworks.

Bringing out the extra spices will be burlesque dancer Amethyst Shivers, who is of course likely to heat up the proceedings, a human Cumin, if you like. The evening will be compered by a comedy legend so underground he's permanently hot from volcanic activity (hence his red hair, the colour of a Rogan Josh), the great Erik Bumbledonk, who was last seen as a suicidal, birdlike imitation of radio DJ Chris Evans, bare-bottomed and jumping out a window to his death.

At the miniscule cost of £3, which now constitutes approximately 3 and a half chocolate bars, or two bags of pasta, or half a bottle of wine, you can't really go wrong. So do come along, wear something dapper or trampsy, whatever is your wont, clean out your eyes and ears (but with something non-corrosive, of course), buy a drink, and learn Howtosayto.

ergophizmiz.net * marthamoopette.blogspot.com * bridportarts.com

Fulcanelli's Shoes - Trailer

The trailer for Ergo Phizmiz's performance/lecture/fact/fiction/opera/film, which premieres at Soundart Radio, Dartington, 5th February 2011. If you can't make it to the opening, why not tune in....

Ergo Phizmiz Live in 2011 - Awaiting Bookings

Ergo Phizmiz is currently putting together a series of live dates in various forms for 2011.


Please contact ergophizmiz at gmail dot com if you are interested in booking any of the following:

Performance-Lectures & Seminars: A rare chance to hear the various nooks and crannies of Ergo Phizmiz's singular work unwound, like a magician revealing his tricks. Part performance, part seminar, Ergo takes various facets of his work over the past ten years and unravels the methods, meaning and madness behind it all.

Find out about the processes of producing a 14 hour radiophonic journey over three years, or how Ergo killed a popular DJ through opera, or how Beyonce translates into Klezmer, or how Ergo met Paul Klee and went on a hot-air balloon ride through the deceased artist's paintings.



Travelling through methodologies including sapling and sound-collage, intense-memetic composition, radio-art structured through tangential wordplay, painting with music, and looking at sound-art & composition through the lenses of both technique and dreams, this will be an entertaining and unique trip through the work of an artist described as "truly a singular visionary".

This performance is available to universities and colleges.

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An Evening with Ergo Phizmiz: The artist described by The Wire as "Not so much a one man band as a one man movement" presents a one-man show.


Across the course of a whole evening Ergo Phizmiz performs extracts of work created from 2001-2011, including pop songs, live radio-art, chamber opera, improvisation, live film soundtracks, and spoken-word, interspersed with film and installation works.


An immensely colourful journey through acoustic, electronic, and sample-based music, and with the benefit of ten years performance experience across the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Romania, Switzerland, and Poland, Ergo gives a chatty, intimate, Dadaistic cabaret show, completely unlike anything else in the world of performance today.

Fulcanelli's Shoes: 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 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.

"The Mourning Show": Ergo Phizmiz's "punk opera" about demons, magic, and the death of a popular radio DJ was described by Vital Weekly as "an excellent opera, which brought plunderphonics to a new level".


Featuring a stunning central performance from Erik Bumbledonk as Chris Evans, The Mourning Show is by turns hilarious, intense, and completely unforgettable.

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To book any of these performances or enquire further, contact ergophizmiz at gmail dot com

"Fulcanelli's Shoes" premiere and "The Mourning Show" special performance at Soundart Radio, February 5th 2011

We are delighted to announce the premiere performance of the new piece by Ergo Phizmiz "Fulcanelli's Shoes", adventures in the 20th century, badly remembered.

This one-man performance is an account of the relationships between the artistic and alchemical worlds of the early 20th century in Paris, centreing around the semi-mythological character of Fulcanelli, author of "Les Mysteres des Cathedrales", with Le Chat Noir cabaret as the central location.

Combining new music and songs based around early 20th century music and medieval/Renaissance elements, with a documentary-narrative and shadow-puppet / stop-motion films, "Fulcanelli's Shoes" is a Dadaist trip into the heart of the cat.

The performance will double-bill with a special performance of Ergo Phizmiz's opera about radio, magic and the death of UK radio DJ Chris Evans "The Mourning Show", taking place in-situ at the Soundart Radio studio. Starring the amazing Erik Bumbledonk as Chris Evans, this nihilistic "punk opera" was described by Vital Weekly as "an excellent opera, which brought plunderphonics to a new level".

This performance is part of Soundart Radio's FirstSpark Festival, at The Gallery, Dartington, Totnes, UK. Go to Soundart, and tune in to the freshest and most resolutely individualistic radio station in the UK.

Ergo Phizmiz Live - November 2010

Ergo Phizmiz is playing a number of live shows at the end of the month. Come along and say hello!



20.11.10 - Don't Drop The Dumbells, Liverpool, presented by UpItUp Records
24.11.10 - Resonance FM, Live session (broadcast)
25.11.10 - Whitechapel Gallery, London, presented by Care in the Community Recordings
26.11.10 - NoNoLogic Festival, Barcelona

Things to Make and Do - Ergo Phizmiz at Whitechapel Gallery

Ergo Phizmiz will be performing a special set from his new album "Things to Do and Make" at Whitechapel Gallery, London, on November 25th 2010, including a performance of songs created through an open invitation to local musicians.

The last time Ergo worked with musicians from the area local to a show to present his songs resulted in the album "Live in Warsaw", with Macio Moretti and Piotr Zabrodzki, which you can hear below:



This event is curated by Care in the Community Recordings.

More information and booking at Whitechapel Gallery.

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz - "The Keystone Cut Ups" - World Premiere, September 15th

Opening Gala - The Keystone Cut Ups

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz
Location: The Maltings Theatre, Berwick-Upon-Tweed, UK
UK / 2010 / 40 min / Cert. Suggested 12

World Premiere

"The premiere performance of the new commission from artists People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz opens the Festival. The Keystone Cut Ups is a live performance that combines video-collage with an original musical score, created using sampling and live instrumentation, to explore the aesthetic, contextual and stylistic relationships between early silent-comedy and early avant-garde cinema.

Using the influence of slapstick comedy on the Surrealists as a starting point, the piece takes us on a madcap journey, combining the techniques and popular imagery of the two genres.

The Surrealists took to cinema easily, using it as a device to show their disdain for established artistic tradition. In their quest to liberate the imagination, they believed that the process of juxtaposing unrelated elements would create images of great emotional and poetic power. Thomas Pynchon wrote, “one could combine inside the same frame, elements not normally found together to produce illogical and startling effects”.

In early silent films the actors often came from the Vaudeville tradition. They used flamboyant body language and facial expressions, a style suited to melodramatic comedy, which was popular at the time for its escape value. The earliest films were influenced by the presentation methods of theatre and the stage sets and inclusion of orchestras and dancers were motifs of entertainment that stuck throughout cinema’s evolution.

The Keystone Cut Ups employs a surrealist approach, presenting images side by side on the screen at the same time. It includes the everyday objects, such as top hats or umbrellas that were utilized as props by both slapstick comedians and the Surrealists, as well as reflecting the concerns of the day like mass industrial automation, and the stories made popular through film at the time, which included clunky monsters and the fantasy of trips to the moon.

The work reflects simultaneously on the histories of these two distinct schools of cinema and how they inform one another, whilst producing a work whose structure and format is informed by both silent comedy and early experimental and avant garde cinema." - Iain Pate

Don’t miss this unique event, followed by a drinks reception in the Maltings’ Stage Door Bar.

http://www.berwickfilm-artsfest.com/events-and-films/8/10/opening-gala-the-keystone-cut-ups#