"The Carnival in the Mirror Marches Into The Sea" - 2011 Ergo Phizmiz radioplay now online at Sonosphere.org

Ergo Phizmiz's 2011 radioplay "The Carnival in the Mirror Marches Into The Sea" is now available to listen online at Sonosphere.org

Commissioned by Marcus Gammel at DeutschlandRadioKultur, the piece combines semi-autobiographical spoken-word with sound-collage and original composition to create an impressionistic journey through memories and dreams of carnivals.

The piece is part of the line of semi-autobiographical "first person" radioplays by Ergo Phizmiz that also includes "The Faust Cycle", "Paul Klee, a Balloon, the Moon, Music and Me", "Disappearing Boxes", "UpsideDownisms", and the forthcoming "Conversations With Birds".

To listen to the piece click here.

Disappearing Boxes : Credits

Broadcast 01/07/11 on Studio Akustische Kunst, WDR3



Written, Composed, Performed & Produced by Ergo Phizmiz



Additional voices by Margita Zalite & Pete Um


Mechanical improvisations and jazz-tube with Erik Bumbledonk




Cassette tapes from Ergo Phizmiz's teenage years, incorporating musical compositions, comedy performances, and a local radio interview, c. 1992/3




Opera fragments by Ergo Phizmiz, from “La Puce de Neige” (2009, for Patrick Sims/Buchinger's Boot Marionettes) “The Mourning Show” (2010, for DePlayer) and “The Third Policeman” (2011, by permission of A.M. Heath Ltd.)



The song “Celandine” by Ergo Phizmiz appears courtesy of Care in the Community Recordings




Sampled (PD & CC sources): The United States Army Old Guard Fife & Drum Corps “Toccata from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo” (Creative Commons) * Enrico Caruso “Ideale My Idial”, “Campaneasera” * Archie Mayer “Svengali” * Maria Callas interview & performance * D'Oyly Carte Opera Company “The Pirates of Penzance” 78 RPM recording * Lewis Carroll's “The Hunting of the Snark” from Project Gutenberg * Paderewski piano performance * Tom Kennedy “Pigtails & Chopsticks” * Pitman's Gramophone Course of Typewriter Keyboard Instruction * Jenny Howard “Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's Forty”


All sampled sounds from archive.org, freemusicarchive.org, and the archive of Bryan Innes Parker






Thanks to Felix Kubin, Martha Moopette, Vulnavia Vanity, Talulah & Autumn

Disappearing Boxes, on Studio Akustische Kunst, WDR3, Germany

Broadcasting on Friday 1st July, 23.05, on WDR3, Germany.

At the age of 12 , with no formal musical training, I wrote my first opera. This was followed over the next three years by ten further operas. The local newspapers described me, perhaps a little prematurely, as “Teesside's answer to Mozart”.

Between the ages of 12-16 I wrote ten operas, a symphony, two cantatas, and countless songs & instrumental music.

At 16 I abruptly abandoned composition and music entirely. At this point I decided to become a stand-up comedian, a line I pursued for the next five years before, eventually, returning back to music via electronic means.

Due to various circumstances, multiple changes of accommodation, and the many boxes of music-manuscript being stored in various people's attics, all of the music I composed as a teenager has, to all intents and purposes, disappeared.

I didn't write another opera until the age of 30.

Last year I found an audio cassette of an interview I took part in on local radio in North-East England, at the age of 13, about an opera I had composed, a farce that took place in a pizza parlour. Aswell as the interview the tape also features a MIDI recording of the Overture to that opera, the only surviving fragment of all my teenage compositions.


"Disappearing Boxes" is an impressionistic attempt to retrospectively analyse this mass of invisible operas that may never see the light of day. The work will attempt to explore the mindset of a teenager suddenly compelled to spend the majority of his time composing operas, whilst simultaneously exploring the medium of opera historically and culturally.


Part detective-tale, part musical analyses, part autobiography, part art-history, this piece will fuse the personal with the theoretical, using radio to delve deep into the way the creative process works.


From WDR3:


Mit 16 Jahren beschloss der junge Mann aus dem Nordosten Englands, Standup-Komiker zu werden. Bis dahin hatte er seine Pubertät zum nicht geringen Teil mit dem Schreiben von zehn Opern, einer Symphonie, zwei Kantaten, Liedern und Instrumentalmusik verbracht. Beim Umzug verschwanden dann allerdings sämtliche Schachteln mit den Noten. Erhalten ist nur der Mitschnitt eines Radiointerviews des 13jährigen Komponisten. Ausgehend von diesem Band versucht Ergo Phizmiz nun die Rätsel seiner Jugend und der Operngeschichte zu verstehen.

Paul Klee, a Balloon, the Moon, Music and Me - Repeated this Saturday on BBC Radio 3

Ergo Phizmiz's radiophonic art-adventure "Paul Klee, a Balloon, the Moon, Music and Me", first broadcast November 2009, is being repeated on BBC Radio 3 this Saturday 02/04/11 at 9pm GMT, and will be available for a week afterwards on BBC iPlayer.

The 30 minute piece, which features Felix Kubin as Paul Klee, and John Matthias as Klee's violin, received the Special Mention in the composed radio category at the 2010 Prix Italia. It tells of a surprise visit by the artist Paul Klee to Ergo Phizmiz, taking him on an adventure through his world and exploring the relationships between painting and music.

From BBC Radio 3:

"A fantastical encounter with Swiss painter Paul Klee, in an imaginary Klee-world of twittering machines and dream landscapes, singing colour polyphony and scribbling violin. Composer and writer Ergo Phizmiz wanders through Klee's paintings in the company of their creator, evoking their vivid colours and whimsical humour in intricately composed soundscapes. Klee takes Ergo on a hot-air balloon ride which, like a magic carpet, miraculously flies them to Tunisia, the land where he 'became a painter'. Their voyage also passes through paintings of strange gardens, mountain carnivals, and abstract colour gradations, before they finally ascend to the moon, a dream-world populated by lunar monkeys, peculiar birds and trees bulging with seeping paint."


The piece is also being written about in a forthcoming book by Stephen Ellis, about the relationship between Klee's painting and music.

Tune in!

Ergo Phizmiz "Pointballing" Live at Whitechapel Gallery, November 2010

Ergo Phizmiz performs "Pointballing : 1 - What The Pig Meant" at his marathon 2 hour one-man show, November 2010, at Whitechapel Gallery, London.

Paul Klee, A Balloon, The Moon, Music and Me - On BBC Radio 3 - December 5th 09

BROADCASTING 2130 GMT, on BBC Radio 3, Saturday December 5th 2009, and on BBC iPlayer for one week after broadcast.

On BBC Radio 3's Between The Ears, "Paul Klee, A Balloon, The Moon, Music and Me"...

A fantastical encounter with Swiss painter Paul Klee, in an imaginary Klee-world of twittering machines and dream landscapes, singing colour polyphony and scribbling violin. Composer and writer Ergo Phizmiz wanders through Klee's paintings in the company of their creator, evoking their vivid colours and whimsical humour in intricately composed soundscapes. Klee takes Ergo on a hot-air balloon ride which, like a magic carpet, miraculously flies them to Tunisia, the land where he 'became a painter'. Their voyage also passes through paintings of strange gardens, mountain carnivals, and abstract colour gradations, before they finally ascend to the moon, a dream-world populated by lunar monkeys, peculiar birds and trees bulging with seeping paint.

This programme’s music and sound-design was entirely composed by Ergo Phizmiz, who also wrote the script and plays himself. The role of Paul Klee is taken by Felix Kubin, also a prolific composer and radio-play maker, who lives in Germany, and Klee's violin is performed by composer John Matthias, winner of the 2008 PRS New Music Award and collaborator with artists including Radiohead, Coldcut and Matthew Herbert.

Go to Between The Ears

"The Faust Cycle" - World Premiere of new 15 hour radioplay on Soundart Radio

A new 15 hour adventure for radio from Ergo Phizmiz, supported by Arts Council England, Quay Arts and Ventnor Blog.

Premiering on Soundart Radio, 12-3am from 8th to 12th September

One afternoon Ergo Phizmiz finds himself lumbered into delivering a parcel to the house of legendary alchemist and necromancer Dr Johann Faustus who, since the events of some time ago for which he is renowned, has entered into a rather quieter life in a vast, labyrinthine house, with hundreds of lodgers running the gamut from artists, birds, bird-people, walking fictions, ventriloquists, a Cassowary, running chairs, walking gramophones, and myriad automata.

This enormous dream fable, told through speech, songs, collage and sound-design, is the result of over three years delving down various rabbit-holes, and features collaborations in a range of contexts with artists of many disciplines, including Jack Phoenix, Margita Zalite, Pete Um, Angela Valid, Bela Emerson, Martha Moopette, Amie Willingale, and Zenith Pitts.

In glorious radiophonic technicolour, it is a musical-comedy of disorientation and magick, somewhere between nightmare and the half-remembered childhood whimsy of an insomniac music-hall artiste.

Please note - "The Faust Cycle" is not, necessarily, suitable for sensitive ears at times, containing, as it does, some naughty words, some sexy references, and a healthy smattering of scatological excess.

If you just can't wait, you could do worse than head over and download the free album of instrumental music from The Faust Cycle, "Music From The House of Dr Faustus".

Talulah & The Baron : Radio for Children

We are delighted to present the pilot episode "Talulah and the Baron", a new Ergo Phizmiz radio piece from a project-in-progress in children's radio.

Talulah and the Baron is a fantasy in sound-design, composition, song, and slapstick.

Voices are by Talulah Lotus & Autumn Poppy, my lovely daughters.

Sound-Design by Ergo Phizmiz & The Travelling Mongoose

Text, Narration, Composition, Production by Ergo Phizmiz

You can download phorphree at WFMU Free Music Archive.

Pointballing 2 : Macaroon - On BBC Radio 3 tonight

Tune into The Verb on BBC Radio 3 tonight for the second instalment of Ergo Phizmiz's "Pointballing". In a Victorian themed special of The Verb, Ergo presents a radiophonic adventure in spoken-word, sound-design, songs, and music, set during the reign of old Queen Vic - a kind of puppet-theatre for the ears.

From Radio 3:

As part of BBC Radio 3's Mendelssohn Weekend, Ian MacMillan's weekly programme dedicated to poetry and the spoken word explores the literary life of the 19th century, from its grand visions and Romanticism to its more curious and eccentric writers. Novelist and The Verb regular Toby Litt talks about some of the lesser-known poet laureates of the period, including Robert Southey, William Wordsworth and the unfortunate Alfred Austin, Tennyson's much-mocked successor, whom Robert Browning dismissed as the 'Banjo Byron'. Ergo Phizmiz presents some 'pointballing', his series of eclectic experiments in sound and language, this time with a Victorian flavour and in the spirit of the nonsense poetry of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. And novelist Gregory Norminton, author of Serious Things, reads The Chronic Omnibus, his new Wellsian tale of how the Victorians saw the future.

And exclusive to this blog in mp3, a sneak preview "behind-the-scenes" of the production of Pointballing, featuring recordings from the foley session joined by The Travelling Mongoose.

The Verb is on at 9.30pm (UK time) on BBC Radio 3, and the show will be available for one week afterwards in BBC iPlayer.

Down By The Stream #2 Playlist & Download

If you tuned into Soundart Radio this afternoon at 2pm UK time, you will have heard some new toying about with radio by Ergo Phizmiz & The Travelling Mongoose, in the shape of the second episode of their irregular "Down By The Stream" shows.

In this show, interspersed with found-sounds, foley, field-recordings, spoken-word, and various other ways of playing about with their favourite medium, we heard (roughly and in no particular order):

Frankie Valli "Grease"
Grange Hill Cast "Just Say No"
Siegfried Wendel "Oldtime Music"
BBC "50 Years of the BBC"
Papadopoulous, Kowald & Floridis "Pyrichia"
Aaron Islamb "Boss Yourself"
The Music of Portsmouth
Indian Summer 12"
Cozy Powell 7"
Buxtehude Fugue
Benjamin Britten "Dances From Gloriana"
Stravinsky "The Firebird (Suite)"
Lord Kitchener "Dr Kitch"
Mr Bach Goes to Town
Disney "Pinocchio"
HMV Vehicle Sound Effects
David Tomlinson "The Life I Lead"
All Star Jazz Festival
Darius Milhaud "Cantate de la Paix"
Kathleen Ferrier 10"
Indo-Jazz Suite
Saint-Saens "Carnival of the Animals"
How To Give Yourself a Stereo Checkout
Disney French 101 Dalmatians 7"

Interview with Chinky Bolin

Mix by Ergo Phizmiz & The Travelling Mongoose

Field-Recordings by The Travelling Mongoose

Produced by Ergo Phizmiz


You can download this show in high-quality mp3 below:

Ergo Phizmiz & The Travelling Mongoose "Down By The Stream #2"

And while you're at it, why not grab the first episode too:

Ergo Phizmiz & The Travelling Mongoose "Down By The Stream #1"


"Down By The Stream", the latest project of Ergo's long running collaboration with the Mongoose, takes place on an irregular basis, as part of Ergo Phizmiz's experimental weekly show on Soundart Radio, Dartington, UK.