We are very pleased to announce that the recently deleted “Rhapsody in Glue” digital album by People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz from 2008 is now available for the first time for free download!
Many thanks to our friends at UbuWeb for hosting this album, which can be sourced here – http://ubu.com/sound/plu_rhapsody.html
You can also download the album by clicking on the links below.
1. Snow Day
2. Gary’s Anatomy
3. Pussycat Giantess
4. English Hunting Song
5. Blame It On The Waltz
6. Carmic Waltz
7. Troika Country Garden
8. Social Folk Dance
9. Smiling Through My
10. In The Waking
11. Dancing in the Carmen
12. Antisocial Boogie
13. Withers in the Whist
Artwork
For background on the album please read on.
Following the success of the critically acclaimed “Perpetuum Mobile” CD of 2007, renowned UK collagists / composers People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz reunite for “Rhapsody in Glue”, a cycle of bricolage-ballet-music, skewed-waltzes, and skewiff-pop.
There is a story behind every album, and with “Rhapsody in Glue” we find a unique approach to constructing a record. Both long-term contributors to New York radio station WFMU, People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz decided to publicly tear apart their respective practices and create an album “in the open”, presenting on a seafood-filled-platter the process of collaborative collage composition – informally discussing and jabbering nonsense to one another, resulting in the “Codpaste” free podcast series (which we have also recently made available as an mp3 download). “Rhapsody in Glue” is the culmination of the ideas explored in the podcast series.
“Rhapsody in Glue” continues in the bizarre ballroom vein of their previous efforts together, however, increasing the sonic palette into textural depths previously uncharted in their work. If “Carmic Waltz” is an expressionist painting by aged ballroom dance teacher who’s eaten the wrong kind of mushrooms in her soufflé, then “Gary’s Anatomy” is a slice of pure absurdist pop shot through with slabs of exotica and Ethel Merman. Recurring through the record is an apparent obsession with Prokofiev’s “Troika (Sleigh Ride)”, which merges and mashes with Burt Bacharach and Queen on “Snow Day”, and lapses into pure fantasy on the almost entirely acoustic “Withers in the Whist”, jarring with Ergo’s strange, Victoriana obsessed lyrics. Then on “Dancing in the Carmen” we discover what happens if Nana Mouskouri is thrown into a pot with Peggy Lee and let simmer for 10 minutes, whilst “In The Waking” shimmers along on multitracked guitars, meandering melodies, and music boxes.
Later in 2008, the duo later went on to release a 7″ with Touch entitled “Withers In The Waking“.
