Ergo Phizmiz in 2012

Well well ... as usual, lots to look forward to from Mr Phiz in 2012 ...

Ergo is becoming an artist-of-the-split-personality: the 'pop' orientated work has become infinitely more refined, moving into a pure and timeless sound that could sit anywhere between the 1960s and 2020, gently subverted from the inside, and produced entirely with one laptop, one microphone, and instruments; whilst his experimental work in opera and radio-art continues to explode format, context, and style, with a healthy disrespect for the boundaries of history and culture.

Please do continue with us on this strange journey, and tell all your friends....it's going to be fun....

Pop music - This year will see the release of the follow up album to 2010's critically acclaimed "Things to Do and Make" on Care in the Community Recordings. Chances are that, if you've seen Ergo perform live in the last year, that you've already heard some of the new songs. Track titles include "The Rock Song of J Alfred Pruflove", "Ophelia", "The Devil in the Belfry" and "Celandine". Ergo will also be touring in support of the album, so keep your eyes peeled.

Gargantua - The new Ergo Phizmiz opera is an epic. Based (very) loosely on Rabelais' "Gargantua & Pantagruel", it takes in the nativity, UFOs, World War II, and a masque of dunces. Ambitious in scope, it will premiere, somewhere, in 2013. Having given up applying for UK arts funding for anything whatsoever, Ergo is writing the opera in his own spare time and hope's to develop partners for the project when it reaches production stages.

You can keep up with the progress of the opera at it's dedicated Soundcloud page.

Conversations With Birds - A new radioplay for Bayerischer Rundfunk is in progress, detailing meetings and incidents with birds from Ergo's life. Written in a mixture of English, German and Polish (with translators Denis Kundic, Caroline Stupnicka and Robin Gill), it promises to be a strange and magickal ornithological odyssey.

Upsidedownisms - A new short-form radioplay for BBC Radio 3, about the art of turning things upside down, and the limits of electronic music, will broadcast on The Verb in late January.

The Mourning Show - On Tour - The 2010 opera about the death by demonic possession of radio DJ Chris Evans will be taken on a comprehensive UK tour in the later part of 2012, in a completely new multimedia staging, starring Elvis Herod as Chris Evans and Ergo Phizmiz as The Plague Doctor.

Populista - Robert Ashley - The division of Bolt Records curated by Michal Libera will release Ergo's collaborative reinvention of the operas and techniques of Robert Ashley.

Electronic Music 2000-2011 - A series of very limited cassette releases bringing a hitherto unreleased mass-body of work from Ergo Phizmiz to you. These will be cut to c45 tapes and released intermittently throughout the year.

Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less, we'll see....

Happy new year from Bridport....

Howtosayto

HOWTOSAYTO Saturday 12th March 2011 at Bridport Arts Centre.

Curated by Ergo Phizmiz & Martha Moopette

Ergo Phizmiz "The Mourning Show" starring Erik Bumbledonk as Chris Evans

Live music from:
Vulnavia Vanity
Eleanor Davis
Oblivian Substanshall
Robert Lee & Friends
Erik Bumbledonk
Amie Willingale
Ergo Phizmiz

DJ Courtley Love spins a bunch of badgoodbeauties

Films from
Martha Moopette
Phil Lane
Erik Bumbledonk
Maria Deegan
Carl Rosendahl
Alexander Jones

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 - World premiere of the new piece by Ergo Phizmiz

World premiere of the new piece by Ergo Phizmiz
Taking place at Soundart Radio, Dartington, UK
February 5th, 2011

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 acclaimed artist, composer and writer 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.

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"Fulcanelli's Shoes" is presented as part of Soundart Radio's FirstSpark Festival, and double-bills with a special, in-studio performance of Ergo Phizmiz's opera about radio, magic, and the death of popular UK DJ Chris Evans "The Mourning Show".

Featuring an unforgettable and masterful central performance from Erik Bumbledonk as Chris Evans, "The Mourning Show" has been described as a punk-opera.

Telling the story of the gradual destruction of Evans on his Radio 2 morning show by three malevolent callers, this performance is an experience you won't easily forget.

As a flummoxed audience member put it at the London premiere in August 2010, "It's not only the big things that can become overwhelming".....

Vital Weekly described it as "an excellent opera, which brought plunderphonics to a new level".

The performance will also contain delicious winter warmer soup, included in the ticket price.

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"Fulcanelli's Shoes" is supported by Arts Council England, Soundart Radio, & Care in the Community Recordings

"The Mourning Show" was commissioned by DePlayer (www.deplayer.nl)

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If, due to geography, time, space, or what-not, you are unable to get along to the performance, you can tune in to the show live on www.soundartradio.org.uk

"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 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....

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.

Whitechapel

Whitechapel Gallery, London, Thursday 25 November, 8p. £7.00

Ergo Phizmiz will perform acoustic versions of his most recent album Things To Do and Make that Mojo have said " sounds like Vivian Stanshall, Syd Barratt and Dali making merry" together with performed excerpts from other works such as The Mourning Show opera , more recently penned eccentric pop and the contextualising, both visually and culinary, of the Things To Do and Make sleeve artwork.

Multi-instrumentalist, composer and “musical man of the moment” (The Times) Ergo Phizmiz will present an informal seminar introducing his diverse practice followed by a performance of solo interpretations of his most recent album Things To Do and Make.

The event will also take the opportunity to show rarely seen images of Stanley Green, the dietary reformer, pamphleteer and regular fixture on Oxford Street between 1968-1993 who formed the inspiration for the sleeve art of Ergo’s album. A small selection of Green’s strict diet will be available to sample during the break and Ergo will perform a specially commissioned song about this London eccentric for voice and recorder, the instrument Green played in rare moments of time off.

Ergo Phizmiz first came to attention for his unique approach to sampling and sound collage for which he is noted in John Peel’s autobiography and his ability in numerous other genres has also become highly regarded. Ergo recently received the Special Mention at the prestigious Prix Italia for a BBC radio 3 commission, has written a score for a Christian Marclay film and received encouragement from Simpsons creator Matt Groening who claims to play his music while at the drawing board. In the past couple of years Ergo has begun to write operatic works again, something he did as a precocious teenager, but his first foray into the “eccentric pop” of Things To Do and Make marks another new direction. The combination of his unique absurdist humour and inventiveness within a pop song structure has gained widespread recognition from national broadsheets and leading music press with the Guardian compelled to say “we can’t decide whether he’s the new Viv Stanshall, a young Eno, a British Zappa or a replacement for Frank Sidebottom” and Mojo to proclaim him as an up and coming songwriter to watch.

Curated by Care in the Community Recordings
care in the community audiovisual
care in the community recordings

Tickets here.

Watch "The Mourning Show" online

The Mourning Show from Bill Bankes-Jones on Vimeo.

Ergo Phizmiz's opera about radio, magic, death and UK radio DJ Chris Evans, commissioned by DePlayer, received it's UK premiere last August at Tete-a-Tete: The Opera Festival. Now you too can join in the nihilistic fun and watch a DJ be destroyed.

On his regular early morning show, popular DJ Chris Evans is telephoned by three ladies.

They proceed to destroy his mind.

Convinced he is a bird, he exits via the fourth storey window.

From “maverick composer” Ergo Phizmiz, The Mourning Show is a demonic-memetic-suitcase-living-room-opera.

“An excellent opera, which brought plunderphonics to a new level” – Vital Weekly

Music, Words & Direction: Ergo Phizmiz
Design & Video: Ergo Phizmiz, Vulnavia Vanity, Martha Moopette & The Travelling Mongoose
Puppeteers: Vulnavia Vanity & Courtley Love
Featuring:
Erik Bumbledonk as Chris Evans
Ergo Phizmiz as the Plague Doctor
and
Martha Moopette, Lucinda Guy and Margita Zalite as the Callers

The Mourning Show - The Talulah Tapes

A very pleasant surprise discovery. Ergo's 6 year old daughter filmed the vast majority of one of the rehearsals of "The Mourning Show" at Tete-a-Tete: The Opera Festival (with the exception of the shadow-puppetry based Prologue). Filmed without sound, we've edited it to the recorded version of the opera, and here it is ....

"The Mourning Show" at Tete-a-Tete: The Opera Festival - Video Extracts

A selection of extracts from the UK premiere of Ergo Phizmiz's opera about radio, magic, death & Chris Evans, "The Mourning Show".















And a little backstage treat, with Vulnavia Vanity lip-syncing to The Quiz, whilst Erik Bumbledonk & Ergo Phizmiz rehearse their moves...

The Mourning Show at Tete-a-Tete: The Opera Festival

We are jolly excited to announce the UK premiere of Ergo Phizmiz's opera about UK DJ Chris Evans, radio, magic and death ....

On his regular early morning show, popular DJ Chris Evans is telephoned by three ladies.

They proceed to destroy his mind.

Convinced he is a bird, he exits via the fourth storey window.

From “maverick composer” Ergo Phizmiz, The Mourning Show is a demonic-memetic-suitcase-living-room-opera.

More info and booking at Tete-a-Tete.

If you just can't wait, download the Pot-Pourri of instrumental music from the opera here.

The Mourning Show - Rehearsal Photos

From the rehearsals of the new opera about the death of Chris Evans, which previewed last night in Nijmegen....

Acquainting oneself with Erik Bumbledonk, star of "The Mourning Show"

"We would be delighted if Chris Evans came to see The Mourning Show and have already contacted him and informed him of this opera. If he objected, we would still perform it anyway. We would hope that if he did ever hear about the show he would see it as a declaration of our love towards him...after all I'm ginger just like he is...still, I could imagine that he might get a little bit upset because he dies at the end. But don't we all?" ERIK BUMBLEDONK

Erik Bumbledonk is an actor, comedian, composer, writer and film-maker. He will be releasing a CC licensed album on Chinstrap under the Plushgoolash moniker in the very near future.

And here's a clip of Mr Bumbledonk in action, in two pieces written by Ergo Phizmiz from 2002-2003-ish. Act 1 & Act 4 of "Komediergophizmiz". Both contain some RUDE WORDS.

The Mourning Show

"THE MOURNING SHOW" by ERGO PHIZMIZ PREMIERE IMMINENT!

Download an mp3 of "STASIMON 2"

From DePlayer:

"For this COM.POST Ergo Phizmiz made a suitcase opera. easy to transport but impressive in it's refined content and output.

An evening of adventures homegrown operesqette business about about the English talk radio DJ Chris Evans doing a phone-in show. Somehow by the end he'll be dead.

This year the term 'Memetism' is a guideline to create new performative soundpieces leaning forward or bending over to opera, ritualistic slaughter, group autistics, chamber meetings amongst others.

The research element for this production will come through the combination of various historical operatic compositional models into a mad amalgamation of self-reflective music.

The evening will be served with a program around this masterpiece, existing of the following bits:
-A collage film about opera, demonology, and the ideas / processes of The Mourning Show
-A series of drawings and collages on opera
-A special party mix of opera-pop
-A set of foundsound by The Travelling Mongoose

THE MOURNING SHOW will have its try-out at Extrapool, Nijmegen at thursday 6 may.

On Sunday 10 may it will play in Les Atelier Claus, Bruxelles.

Later this year it will do another tour in Holland, France, Germany and Poland


COM.POST is financially supported by the Mondriaan Foundation, the City of Rotterdam Department of Culture, Nederlands Fonds voor Podiumkunsten+,
the Pact op Zuid, the Stichting ter bevordering van Volkskracht and Vestia."

The Mourning Show - Flyer by Redbol for the Extrapool Show, May 6th

We are jolly delighted by artist Redbol's flyer for the Extrapool performance of Ergo's forthcoming "living room opera" The Mourning Show.

The Mourning Show - May 2010

De Player presents
"The Mourning Show"
An Opera about Death, Magic & Radio

Written & Composed by Ergo Phizmiz

Starring Erik Bumbledonk as Chris Evans

With the voices of Lucinda Guy, Martha Moopette & Margita Zalite

Project Consultant The Travelling Mongoose

Masks by Vulnavia Vanity

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The first performances of The Mourning Show
will take place at:

May 6th 2010 - Extrapool, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

May 8th 2010 - DePlayer, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

May 9th 2010 - Les Ateliers Claus, Brussels, Belgium

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Download the hi-res poster

Download an mp3 preview of a Pot-Pourri of music from "The Mourning Show"

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We will be delighted to see you there .....

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.