Showing posts with label chinstrap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chinstrap. Show all posts

Monday, 14 February 2011

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

Thursday, 16 December 2010

Ergo Phizmiz 2010 Retrospective

2010 has been a very busy year indeed in Phizmiz towers, so we thought it an opportune moment for a flashback...

"The Faust Cycle"


The year began with the release on Headphonica of "The Faust Cycle", Ergo's epic 15 hour adventure in sound, released under for free under a Creative Commons license. The album has now been downloaded by in excess of 5,000 listeners, and has been broadcast on stations across the globe. Although generally ignored by the conventional media, the enlightened blogosphere acclaimed the work wholeheartedly, with Continuo describing the piece as "the most ambitious music project conceived in the 21st century and certainly the only one able to change your listening habits." Download "The Faust Cycle" at Headphonica. This was shortly followed by a remix project "The Faust Re.Cycled", also available at Headphonica here.

"The Mourning Show"

The Mourning Show from Tête à Tête on Vimeo.

Ergo Phizmiz's opera about radio, magic, death and UK radio DJ Chris Evans was commissioned by and premiered at De Player in Rotterdam, with further performance in Nijmegen and Brussels. Vital Weekly described it as "an excellent opera which brought plunderphonics to a new level". The show received it's UK premiere in August, at Tete-a-Tete: The Opera Festival.

"Things To Do and Make"


Ergo's pop album was released on Care in the Community Recordings earlier in the year to widespread critical acclaim. Pennyblack Music said "The first major and mainstream Ergo Phizmiz album may be a small independent release, but this album goes to show how major record companies have lost touch completely. It's the kind of listening experience that will force you to shut down your mobile and close your Twitter and Facebook accounts." The album can be bought at the majority of music retailers online and in some shops, whatever they are....

"The Keystone Cut-Ups"


People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz "Blue Moon" [2010] from Vicki WFMU on Vimeo.

The long running collaboration between Ergo Phizmiz & collagist People Like Us continued in the form of "The Keystone Cut-Ups", an A/V work playing with the relationships between early silent cinema and Surrealist cinema. The piece was commissioned by and premiered at Berwick Film & Media Festival, with further performances scheduled for 2011.

"Music For The Jilted Generation"

Continuing his long line of albums of cover versions of popular classics, the marvellous UpItUp Records released Ergo Phizmiz's retake for acoustic instruments of the entirety of The Prodigy's "Music For The Jilted Generation". This release also came with a handy zip file of all of Ergo's cover versions from 2003-2010, and you can grab it all, free, here.

"Collected Sound Installations"


Surrism-Phonoethics recently released Ergo Phizmiz's Collected Sound Installations from 2001-2010, 4.5 hours of Ergo's most experimental music including "Forest", "The Phantom Organ" and "Music For Squares and Spinning". You can grab that, for free, right here.

Chinstrap - The netlabel from Ergo Phizmiz


Since January Ergo has been running a free, Creative Commons netlabel. Now with 15 published releases, the label has put out work by artists including Oblivian Substanshall, Vulnavia Vanity, Angela Valid, The Travelling Mongoose, and The Superfools, including soundtracks, children's music, musique-concrete, sampling, improvisation, radio-art and songwriting. You can download all releases from the Chinstrap blog, which can also be accessed in one convenient list here.

And more ....

This year Ergo also ..... received a grant to produce a new work called "Fulcanelli's Shoes" which premieres in February 2011; played live shows across the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain; composed additional music for Frankie Boyle's "Tramadol Nights" on Channel 4; re-released remastered versions of archive pieces including "M: 1000 Year Mix" & "Cinemacollages"; a sound-installation for the Depozitory on the Isle of Wight; and received the Special Mention in composed radio for his work "Paul Klee, a Balloon, the Moon, Music and Me" at the Prix Italia. This year he has been written about in The Guardian, The Times, The Wire, and Mojo magazine, aswell as comprehensive interviews on Tokafi, Popshifter, and Intangible23.

The year ends with a Christmas Eve mix from Ergo Phizmiz on Tom Ravenscroft's BBC 6Music show, which you can find out all about here.

Wishing you all a marvellous end of the year, and a excellent next one....

Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Ergo Phizmiz interviewed by Ayoze Garcia

On a recent trip to Barcelona Ergo Phizmiz was interviewed in-depth on the telephone by Ayoze Garcia on Intangible23, who earlier in the year wrote detailed analyses of every episode of "The Faust Cycle".

The interview, which spans Ergo's "Collected Sound Installations", the album "Things to Do and Make", the death opera "The Mourning Show", and netlabel Chinstrap, features Spanish language text, with English language audio of the interview. You can read / listen here.

Saturday, 27 March 2010

Ergo Phizmiz news, mid 2010

Eventful times ahead, and here at Phizmiz towers we find ourselves at a strange juncture, so what better time than to update on impending goodness and gracious...

"The Mourning Show" - Ergo Phizmiz's new opera about UK radio DJ Chris Evans' opens May 8th 2010 at DePlayer, Rotterdam, with a couple of European dates programmed around it. It is anticipated the opera will tour the UK and Europe later in the year. It will be presented alongside new A/V material, DJ sets, and collages.


"Things to Do and Make" - After many delays the album of eccentric pop music will be released by Care In The Community Recordings in July. Many of the songs will be familiar to anyone who's seen Ergo play live over the past couple of years, including "Mandrill", "Busby Berkeley", "Late", and "The Dapper Transvestite". Londoners can amuse themselves in a few weeks by spotting Ergo walking up and down Oxford Street with a big sign.


"Music For The Jilted Generation" - A new cover of the entirety of The Prodigy's seminal 1990s dancefloor filler will be released free by UpItUp Records in May, alongside a collection of all of Ergo's covers projects from 2002-2010.


"Toped Buts" - a new album of instrumental music and improvisation will be released as a limited edition CDr on Cataclyst Records imminently. Tracks include "Pajamas for His Apprentice", "Bally Buttons", and "Socks Reggae".


"The Faust Cycle" has continued to garner great reviews around the blogosphere. Take a peep at one of the most recent, at Continuo. And for readers in Deutschland, you could do worse than pick up the latest issue of Beat Magazine, which features a long interview with Ergo about the creation of this 15 hour slab of audio beef.


Chinstrap - Ergo's free, Creative Commons netlabel Chinstrap is at Chinstrapmusic.blogspot.com, with new releases due from Angela Valid and Plushgoolash.

Ergo is also working on new material for the work-in-progress The Old Man Of The Mountain of Patrick Sims & Les Anticliastes Marionettes; the early stage planning for a mechanical opera about the English clown Joseph Grimaldi; and a new album of experimental pop and sound-design.

Tuesday, 9 March 2010

Chinstrap - A new netlabel from Ergo Phizmiz

Since January 2010, Ergo Phizmiz has been running a Creative Commons netlabel called Chinstrap. Here are the first five releases from this new project....

CHIN05 - Various Artists
"Cyclic Bits : The Raymond Scott Variations"

Remixes of Raymond Scott by some of the most inventive composers around.


CHIN04 - Oblivian Substanshall "The Greatest Hits of Oblivian Substanshall....and so on"
Pop songs, spoken-word, radio-art, and drawings from a unique purveyor of timeless English nonsense abstraction. Triple album.


CHIN03 - Martha Moopette, Heather McCallum & Rosalind Noctor "Hedgehogs & Honeybeads"
Electroacoustic soundtrack to award winning dance & animation film.

CHIN02 - Various Artists "Windpipe Moods"
Re-issue of sound-poetry compilation, first released on Mukow CD 2004.

CHIN01 - The Travelling Mongoose
"Singin' In The"
Field-recording sound-collage from a Mongoose who perpetually travels with a sound-recorder.

More Chinstrap at http://chinstrapmusic.blogspot.com