Wednesday, May 12, 2010

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...

3 comments:

Dj No Breakfast said...

Ergo Phizmiz rules! It's an amazing project, i also loved the soundtracks they 've made recently with Vicky Bennet for one of my favorite experimental shortfilm "Ghost before breakfast" by Hans Richter from 1928.

Mr Fab said...

Thanks phantom, didn't know about the "Ghost before Breakfast" project, I'll check it out. Those two are so prolific it's hard to keep up. I did finally watch the Vicki Bennett/People Like Us videos on ubuweb.com, and they are wonderfully wonderful.

Eiron Page said...

Not quite as long as some of the pieces(e.g. the 1,453 hr The Chosen Priest and Apostle of Infinite Space) by Bull of Heaven, but I'm looking forward to hear this having been a casual Phizmiz fan for some time. Whether this is the "world's longest album" depends a lot on how you determine the qualities that define an album.