Three Collage Films

Three collage films by Dominic Robertson, produced 2016-2017.

"Seine Saint Denis 1954" (2016)

"Icon Painting - Saint Joan" (2016-2017)

"Mrs Keble" (2017)

Boubouroche - A Longer Player

"Boubouroche" - A Longer Player by Dominic Robertson

The Sun God be praised! From one of the world's most prolific and inventive composers comes his first long(er) player in nigh on three years, and the first to be released since dropping the moniker Ergo Phizmiz - a name under which he released hundreds of hours of music.

"Boubouroche" is an epic odyssey through experimental pop music, fragmented classical, electronic work-outs, and mutant disco. Recorded between 2015-2016, the album combines musical craftsmanship and a flawless sense of melody with Dominic's trademark nihilistic humour, from the pitch-perfect pop of "Waresley Wood" and "Disposable Love Song", the sledgehammer satire of "NME", the fragile de-collage of "Salad Amadeus", to the relentless churn of Casio keyboard bangers like "Pavilion Two Step" and "Uncertainty Disco".

Combining original composition with found-lyrics and reconstituted historical music, this is an album imbued with a dual sense of magic and radicalism. Songs of bad romance, art history, catholic fantasy, science-fiction collide with impeccable instrumentals to create an unforgettable record unlike any other you are likely to hear this, or any, year. And that includes the new record by Steps, brilliant though it will surely be.

The lyrical content of the record is taken from all over the place - newspapers, history books, political pamphlets, music magazines, cheap romance novels, art documentaries, and found handwritten CD cases.

Dominic Robertson is a composer, writer, collagist, theatre director, installation artist, film-maker, actor, performance-artist, and creator of radio-plays. Across the past 17 years he has developed a reputation as one of the most uncompromising and unique artists in the world. His music has been released by Discrepant, Care in the Community Recordings, Gagarin Records, DePlayer, Soleilmoon, and Illegal Art, and his highly acclaimed radio work broadcast on Bayerischer Rundfunk, WDR, WFMU, Resonance FM, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 6Music and Deutschlandradiokultur. For many years he released countless hours of music for free online, under a Creative Commons license - there are over 3000 videos using his music now online. Elsewhere he has created television for Channel 4, operas for Mahogany Opera Group and Tete-a-Tete Opera, the soundtrack to acclaimed Coney Island documentary "Famous Nathan", and most recently the Brexit science-fiction opera / community play "That Happy Breed" for Worm, Rotterdam. Among the artists with whom he has collaborated are Lukas Simonis, R Stevie Moore, Felix Kubin, Frederic Wake-Walker, Vicki Bennett / People Like Us, Frankie Boyle, Pollyester, Patrick Sims, and Luke Fowler. A retrospective book of his visual work was published as "Cold Collation" by the arts publisher Content Series in 2015. His writing has been published by the International Journal for Flann O'Brien Studies, DePlayer, and The Wire magazine.

"Boubourouche" is performed on voice, piano, violin, electric guitar, electronic keyboards, bird-whistle, Newton's Cradle, feedback, and sound-collage, and is entirely recorded in the brown carpeted box that is Casseablanca Studios, in the home of brown that is Bridport, UK. The costumes on the front cover, and photographs, are by Kitty Callister, taken during rehearsals for Mahogany Opera Group's "Mozart vs Machine" in Folkestone.

This album is dedicated to Dominic's dad, Stormin' Norman.

That Happy Breed - Brexit Opera, at CCA Glasgow

Delighted to announce that my Brexit science-fiction opera "That Happy Breed" plays in Glasgow at the CCA on May 18th, with a cast of locals. Huge thanks to Shireen Taylor at The Hidden Noise for making this happen.

In a not too distant future an isolated Britain survives on an otherwise scorched earth, saved from nuclear misunderstandings by Brexit. "That Happy Breed" is a science-fiction vision of "an island in the moon", adrift on shared history and past glories, visions of empire and sightings of rabbits on the copse. 

Utopia or dystopia? Either way, something is bubbling under the civilised surface of day to day life, and there doesn't seem to be anything anybody can do to stop it.
 
And the earth itself? It's flat!
 
"That Happy Breed" is presented with a cast of local people wherever it goes. A large scale community play with songs, music, Morris dancing, marching, a dash of Christmas, and a special appearance by Her Majesty the Queen.
 
"That Happy Breed" is a commission of Worm, Rotterdam.

Facebook event page for "That Happy Breed" at CCA Glasgow.

Watch the trailer for the original Rotterdam production of the show ...

 
Watch this flat earth in space for news about further UK productions of this timely parable and a forthcoming publication. Interested in staging it in your town? Get in touch with either yours truly or the good folk of Worm... 

Think you know Mozart? Think again...

Clips from Mahogany Opera's production of the opera wot I wrote, "Mozart vs Machine", which premiered at Profound Sound, Folkestone, February 2017.

 

Mozart Vs Machine

Mahogany Opera Group presents an electronic essay collage opera mashing-up Mozart, electronic sound and video. 

 

Mozart vs Machine is a high-octane mash-up of Mozart opera, electronic sound and video projection, bringing some of history’s most iconic artists together in a theatrical sci-fi-gameshow encounter.

Alone in his Manhattan research laboratory, Raymond Scott, the father of electronic music, is developing a machine to generate random musical patterns. When one of his devices accidentally tears a hole in the universe it distorts time and brings him face to face with classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

What follows is a fantastical journey through ideas of art and ownership, time and music shaken up through unexpected directions and random chance, culminating in a surreal, vaudevillian show trial. All with a little help from film-pioneer Georges Méliès, Lewis Carroll’s logic games, and composers John Cage and J S Bach.

In Mozart vs Machine, composer Dominic Robertson (the artist formerly known as Ergo Phizmiz) pieces together ideas and notes from across history into an irreverent collage of music and theatre that blurs the boundaries of opera and performance art. Think you know Mozart? Think again…

MOZART vs MACHINE premieres at Profound Sound Festival, Folkestone Fringe, February 3rd 2017.

A Mahogany Opera Group production
Developed through Mahogany's Various Stages programme with generous support from Sound and Music

WHAT WILL BE BUILT

I'm delighted to present my Xmas single for you lovely people in these troubled times. Recorded in the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Germany, and the UK, with text taken from a daily UK ragmag, this is to go next to your mulled wine and Uzi.






"What Will Be Built"
Recorded at Worm Sound Studio, Rotterdam; Sofia, Kazanlak & Ahtopol, Bulgaria; Eden Hotel Wolff, Munich; and my house, Bridport, UK. Synthesisers performed by Andrew Dickinson and me. Dedicated to the happy loss, the shine in your golden underwear, the folks of Worm, and everybody with half a brain or more. And you.

Happy Fucking Xmas Cowboys

Die Bayerische Prinzessin

 

Greetings from Munich, where I am recording a new radio-play called "Die Bayerische Prinzessin". It tells the story of Princess Alexandra Amalie of Bavaria who, at ten years old, believed she had swallowed a grand piano made of glass. The piece is a commission of Bayerischer Rundfunk, and will broadcast next year.