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17 August 2011

Wild imaginings

Ergo Phizmiz's operatic adaptation of Flann O'Brien will leave you speechless.

By Tom Ravenscroft

Ergo Phizmiz’s opera based on Flann O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman opens this weekend at the Riverside Studios in London, before taking a rather leisurely jaunt around the country, ending up somewhere in Bridport in December. If it’s anything like his last, The Morning Show, an opera about Chris Evans going slowly mad, which ends with the DJ believing that he is a crow, then I strongly advise you try to attend. Ergo is an exceptionally difficult fellow to describe. He has, over the years, produced a body of work that crosses over every kind of music and sound imaginable and he can imagine considerably more than you or me.

You should probably expect to be at first a little startled — the music will be wildly unpredictable, as, I suspect, will be his actions. I would be almost concerned if you had witnessed anything like it before. He is a burst of imagination, colour and noise, which has in the past left me sitting jaw collapsed on the floor, speechless as to how someone can so beautifully map out such madness.

On a separate note, my favourite record this week is “12,000 Sentinels” by Benjamin Shaw.

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