Writer, composer, collagist, theatre & opera maker, radio producer, songwriter, and performer Ergo Phizmiz. The scourge of modern opera and Paul McCartney's favourite meat substitute.
"Some Folk Can", in which Ergo Phizmiz presents an epic of super-magick-sexy-electro-mechanical-marvels.
Combining a myriad approaches from his last fourteen years of adventures in the further reaches of experi-pop-fragmento-collage-musicking into new and surprising shapes and combinations, "Some Folk Can" sees Ergo Phizmiz blur and toy with the boundaries and blurred lines of acoustic and computer music. And not a Thicke Robin in sight.... Harmoniums fly through the air and clash with electric guitars, woodblocks of all shapes and sizes judder against one another, great big airships of the history of music explode into one another. Then all the world went dark. Because some folk can.
A Journey in one end, out the other, that is, in one end out the other of John Holt’s song “Strange Things”. Music entertaining itself by time-travel and playing with itself, with a touch of eroticism.
AND WHY NOT DEAR? GRAB IT! BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS INTO THE BOOJUM’S FAT BELLY! This little album is didaktikedited to Sir Banana and Lady Bufetowa
Ladies and Gentlemen, put that razor away and put on your dancing shoes. The third instalment of Ergo's Disco Van has careered into town in a hazy mist of steam and wine.
This edition, "Ergo's Disko Van Dysko", is dedicated to Dick Van Dyke and his remarkable dancing shoes.
Four slabs of uberdisco, replenished with the stench of a fat man at the end of the night in the discotheque.
TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS.
STEAL SOME WHITE BROGUES.
KNOCK ON PEOPLE'S DOORS THEN RUN AWAY.
DRINK IMPROVISED COCKTAILS AND TAP YOUR FOOT UNTIL IT SMARTS A BIT.
Something is happening. It's "Ergo's Disco Van Too".
Ergo Phizmiz is becoming an Ubu-esque king of the disco. His moustache roars with deepbeat. His footwork is fancy and fly. His white trousers fall down in the noisy night. The crowd screams, then dies.
Like this, try the first release of "Ergo's Disco Van"...
A series of sound-collages on cinema and animation, comprising: "Sounds of Soviet Animation" Volumes 1 & 2 (mixes of sound-design and music from the Soyuzmultfilm Studios), "Betty Boop" (a mix of sounds from the legendary Fleischer animations), "Trnka / Trojan / Novak" (comprising of sound-effects from Jiri Trnka's collaborations with composers), "Laurel & Hardy Ubermash" (a mash-up of various hollerings, clangs, and music from the Hal Roach era L & H films), and "A Fantasia on Jan Svankmajer" (a whistlestop tour of stop-motion and Surrealism).
These collages were created 2006-2009
The pieces included here were originally created for Ergo Phizmiz's Phuj Phactory on WFMU, except "Trnka / Trojan / Novak", which is previously unreleased.
Within these collages you will hear music and sound-design from:
Zdenek Liska * Ideya Garanina * A. Babaev * N. Bogoslovski * Alfred Schnittke * A. Babaev * Yuri Norstein * B. Shapner * V. Dashkevich * Vadim Kurchevsky * Nina Shorina * Natalia Golovanova * Anatoly Petrov * M. Meyerovich * A. Khrjanovsky * V. Shumova * L. Atamanov * Ivan Ivanov-Vano * N. Serabryakov * E. Artemiev * Laurel & Hardy * Zoltan Kodaly * Charles Barlow & his Orchestra * Captain Wiggly-Hips * Edvard Grieg * Tchaikovsky * The Mike Sammes Male Voice Choir * Raymond Scott * The Avalon Boys * Auf Zum Schutzenfest * Ludwig Koch * Louis Armstrong * The Beau Hunks * Woody Allen * Groucho Marx * Max Fleischer * Sammy Timberg * Jan Svankmajer * Jack Hylton * BBC Radiophonic Workshop * Bernard Herrmann * The Marx Brothers * Esquivel * John Tavener * John Cage * Paul Bowles * The Brothers Quay * Leszek Jankowski * Bert Kaempfert * Luis Bunuel * Brian Easdale * Gyorgy Ligeti * Jiri Trnka * Vaclav Trojan * Jan Novak
Cinemacollages Volume 2 – Orson Welles / Karel Zeman's Magic Composites / Laurel & Hardy: Static / The Dream of Alfred Hitchcock is a work-in-progress ....
A live album, from Ergo Phizmiz's live show at The Song Is You Festival, Warsaw, September 2009.
The show featured Warsaw based musicians Macio Moretti & Piotr Zabrodski, and goes between solo numbers performed by Ergo, and songs performed as a three piece band.
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.
We are delighted to announce the online-only, free release of a new album of covers of 1990s chartbusting, dancefloor filling smash hits, arranged for acoustic, electronic, homemade, and toy instruments, by Ergo Phizmiz & The Midnight Florists.
"Now That's What We Pump At The Party"
Following in the footsteps of the reviled, acclaimed, maimed and shamed Ergo Phizmiz & his Orchestra project (also available free), which covered the music of Aphex Twin, the entirety of the second Velvet Underground album, and a selection of 90s & noughties R & B classics for acoustic and toy instrument. This recording, however, moves on from the sound of the Orchestra project, moving into a more band-orientated sound, sounding something similar to strange manic jazz made by psychotic octogenarians on whatever instruments they could find.
For anyone with fond or hate-filled memories of such luminaries as C & C Music Factory,Dee Lite, Lou Bega, Culture Beat, or Snap, this album is for you. Hear Ergo & the Florists tear their way through "Rhythm is Dancer" like a party of wild banshees armed with ukuleles and box drums, or crawling across the bar-room Harmonium on an afterparty "Mambo No 5". Help us call "Mr Vain", complete with toy piano and the Monkton-o-phone, or simply put on your dancing shoes and begrudgingly admit that "Groove is in the Heart", which, hearts in the groove, the Midnight Florists plough through, group falsetti circling like vultures atop the corpse of that 'indestructable medium', the CD.
This album is the first release by the new musical unit The Midnight Florists. The group, on this release, is comprised of Ergo Phizmiz, The Travelling Mongoose, Monkton Wylde and Vulnavia Vanity, all of whom play all manner of instruments and contribute vocals to the release. Special mention should go to The Travelling Mongoose's newfound skills in very, very high falsetto vocals, at which he is an undisputed master.
Download, dance, and tell all your friends .....
Here be the link, on the marvellous WFMU Free Music Archive .....
To commemorate the impending viewing of the Nicolas Cage remake of "The Wicker Man" tonight (a long-term ambition only just being fulfilled), we are making public Ergo's 2008 Christmas present to Vulnavia Vanity (drummer of The Midnight Florists and designer extraordinaire, who knocked up the above eye candy), a short ditty dedicated to the life and career of the one and only good St Nicolas Cage.
The result of increasingly frequent comings to verbal blows with intrusive and arrogant neighbours!
"Trying to Be Peaceful" is a general "bad neighbour" song.
"Old Chap" is for the old chap on one side.
"Turn It Down" is for the lady and gentleman on the other side.
These pieces will be playing on a regular basis in my living room over the coming weeks.
And, in solidarity with anyone else who has neighbours who disturb their peace with idiocy and condescension, I am offering to produce, free of charge, a custom-made song that you can play on a regular basis, just loud enough for the neighbours to hear the lyrics. Send a paragraph detailing your neighbourly situation, and what the problems are, and you, too, soon enough will have an Ergo Phizmiz song all of your own with which to do battle with bad, rude and miserable neighbours.
Written, Composed, Performed & Produced by Ergo Phizmiz, July 4th 2009.
Hot of the presses, a new five-track EP of instrumental music by Ergo Phizmiz.
"Earballet - Don Quixote" takes five scenes from Cervantes' novel as the basis of compositions, written for acoustic, electric, and homemade instruments, with voices and field-recordings.
It's an indicator of Ergo's more recent sound, sort of instrumental tapestries.
The first material to be released from Ergo Phizmiz's large scale radio work "The House of Dr Faustus", a real labour of love now nearing completion, has just hit the web!
'Music from "The House of Dr Faustus"' is an hour of new instrumental Ergo Phizmusic created over the last two years, basically the soundtrack album to the radioplay, a Surrealist journey into a house with a depth of hundreds of miles.
It is also the first release displaying Ergo's more recent stylistic developments, with a greater focus on instrumentation and detailed arrangements. "Gretchen's Tango" dreams woozily about on harmoniums and multitracked trumpets, whilst "Music For Darkness" visualises an immense black, timeless space with thumping violas, Cajon and harmonica. Also pay a visit to a "Dream Garden", experience the "Death Dance of David Niven", or sink into the "Music For an Underground Circus".
This release is available in high quality mp3 format, completely free ....
