I Can Fly – new radio piece for WDR

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I Can Fly
A Radio Collage by Vicki Bennett
Created for Open Sounds on WDR 3
Premiere Broadcast 25 April 2020 10:04pm – Midnight on WDR 3
Listen to the live stream using the Play button: https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr3/index.html
The WDR 3 archive link is available until 2 May 2020.

People Like Us have created a new radio work for WDR around the theme of flying, premiere is the above date. https://www1.wdr.de/radio/wdr3/programm/sendungen/wdr3-open-sounds/index.htm

The working process of making I Can Fly involves taking the transcripts from the interview participants, cutting them up and creating the radio work as a text piece first.
Listen to Vicki Bennett answer questions about the piece

What it is to be “grounded” or “elevated”, and how is it that they relate directly to each other?  When is not flying defining us more than flying?  How much is being on the ground and/or the normal waking bodily situation constituting what it is to be “us”?  If we were in space or another planet with different or no gravitational pull how would it change our self definition which is so dependant upon our relationship to objects and people around us of the “normal/home” conscious experience? When is something not reality and when it is not ours (our body, our planet/surface) – how much does this relate to our needing to be on the planet’s surface or grounded in our own mind/body? How often do you think about the fact that we are flying on a planet through space? Why are we all dreaming the same thing?!!!

These are some of the questions being asked around the subject of flying by Vicki Bennett and answered by over 50 participants in this intricate and tangentially edited new radio collage work commissioned by Open Sounds on WDR.

Featuring the voices and recordings of:
Akāshamitra, Atau Tanaka, Ariadne, Austin Rich, Beth Arzy, Cameron Hamilton, Casper Carey, Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee, Dan Bodah, David Cox, Drew Daniel, Eric Kilkenny, Falco Carey, Gaylord Fields, Hearty White, Henry Löwengard, Iain Chambers, Jeff Carey, Jem Finer, Katja Seltmann, Kevin Hamilton, Kim Farrier, Kira O’Reilly, Leanne Bryan, Leech Ernowetz, Leon Clowes, Mark Gergis, Mark Heath, Mark Leahy, Melissa Healing, Michael Newman, Molly Hankwitz, Nicola Battista, Peter Jaeger, Peter Knight, Rahne Alexander, Richard Lindsay, Robert Worby, Runa Kirby Torbo, Seth Horvitz, Sharon Gal, Simon Faulkner, Simon Hamilton, Steven Ball, Tim Maloney, Tom Comitta, Vicki Bennett, Will Edmondes and Yvonne Szymczak

Thanks to all of the above for their generous input, which totally led the way in how the piece was put together.

Mastered by Mark Gergis

PLU video on WFMU

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Join People Like Us for an hour of audiovisual entertainment, edited specially for Ken Freedman’s radio show on WFMU. You can listen to this at home or in the… you can listen to it, er, at home… and you can watch it too!

Come and watch People Like Us and friends on Ken’s playlist page and on the WFMU front page just before 11am NY time on Wednesday 8 April 2020. Ideally we recommend listening to his whole show of course from 9am!

Join People Like Us on Ken’s live playlist: http://wfmu.org/playlists/KF

Support People who are Like Us

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If you are wondering how to best support freelance artists right now, buy something of theirs through a channel that you know would pay them direct. This may be paypal, or for music people we recommend finding their bandcamp account and supporting them that way. Likewise, in the current climate we think it would be reasonable to take it that our forthcoming 4 concerts on mainland Europe will be cancelled, although we are waiting to find out right now. If you’d like to support us here is our bandcamp page. Many thanks.
https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/

People Like Us Co-host in WFMU 2020 Fundraiser

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Vicki will co-host with Hearty White in the WFMU 2020 Fundraising Marathon. Many of you will know about WFMU already – this is a listener funded radio station where none of the DJs are paid – all give time in kind with a capital K. These days it’s a rare thing to see ventures like this, many have been stamped on by the big boot of capitalism. If you are able to donate to WFMU you can both get some great swag and also be in the running for all sorts of DJ prizes and premiums.

https://pledge.wfmu.org/donate

Tune into Hearty White, co-hosted by Vicki on WFMU on 5th March at 7pm-8pm NY time (that’s midnight that evening in the UK) or listen to the archive shortly after here.

The Mirror at WFMU

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Thursday 5th March 2020, 8:00 PM EST | Doors at 7:30 PM
Monty Hall, 43 Montgomery Street, Jersey City, NJ 07302
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-mirror-tickets-90365302051

People Like Us’s musical collage movie The Mirror will screen for one night only at Monty Hall in this WFMU Benefit. This will be a rare theatrical screening, introduced by the artist herself. A selection of short films will precede this 40 minute screening.

”With The Mirror Bennett has proven herself an alchemist of popular music, able to push her source material into fresh and engaging places.” – The Wire

Limited Offer: 75% off our Full Digital Discography

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Happy 2020!  As a new year thank you we are offering our entire digital discography to you for 75% off for the next 24 hours.  This might offer you an extra incentive to suddenly have days (weeks.. months?) of most of our back catalogue instantly, and in return you would be helping us out a great deal to carry on with what we do, making art full time… did you know People Like Us is 30 this year?

If you’d like to buy the digital discography just go to our bandcamp page and go to any link in the digital download section and you can purchase at 75% from any page, until tomorrow.  Here’s a shortcut to our bandcamp page now:

https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com

Many thanks for your continued support!

On The Radio With Hearty White

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People Like Us are on the radio on Thursday 26 December 2019 with Hearty White for a very special joint show with special guests Gwilly Edmondez, Ergo Phizmiz and Caterina Robertson (aka The Reason).

Tune in on from 7-8pm NY Time (that is Midnight-1 Thursday evening in the UK) on WFMU. Playlist and subsequent archive of the show here:
https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/90406

Buy our full digital discography

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Also have been updating our bandcamp with some more items, both digital and merchandise, including adding the option of buying the full digital discography with one click of a button, enabling you to get a 40% discount by doing so. 

As ever, you can if you wish access a lot of our work for free online from various places, it is very important for us ethically to continue to be generous with the “sharity” ideal even if we are low in income ourselves. HOWEVER, by buying from us you contribute to keeping us going financially and enabling us to produce more. We do this for a living, we don’t have a fancy side job, as is also the case with a lot of the artists we collaborate with!  So if you can chip in we more than appreciate it.

https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/