THE WORLD'S LONGEST ALBUM?!

We've been writing about British nutter Ergo Phizmiz for a while now, but he's outdone himself this time. Actually, he's outdone everyone. Presenting a 15-hour long project, which you can listen to or download for free here:

The Faust Cycle or, The House of Dr Faustus
He mixes radio-drama surrealism with antique-garde mashups and experimental music, and except for a prolonged noise/tuneless whistling stretch in the middle of part one, I was pretty much entertained throughout. Yes, I've listened to the whole thing, and then some. As the man says:

"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...
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."

Spectacular projects like this and Wax Audio's "Nine Countries" are further evidence that, despite mass media/entertainment industry indifference, the internet is on the cutting edge of culture. It's not just a bunch of kids posting LOL-cat pictures. Maybe historians will figure that out one day...