People Like Us (Vicki) and Wobbly (Jon Leidecker) paid an impromptu visit to KALX in Berkeley on 3 October 2017 to go on Carnacki‘s radio show. Here is the 3 hour conversation about Recombinant Festival, immersive media, collaborations, radio and vaporwave.
Vicki dropped by Hearty White‘s show Miracle Nutrition on WFMU on 7 September 2017 for a chat about… well we don’t know, but it was fun.
Show archive
Under the name “People Like Us,” artist Vicki Bennett has been making work available via CD, DVD and vinyl releases, radio broadcasts, concert appearances, gallery exhibits and online streaming and distribution for 25 years. Since her first publication in 1992, Bennett has developed an immediately recognisable aesthetic repurposing pre-existing footage to craft audio and video collages with an equally dark and witty take on popular culture. She sees sampling and appropriation as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Embedded in her work is the premise that all is interconnected and that claiming ownership of an “original” or isolated concept is both preposterous and redundant.
The final DO or DIY with People Like Us on WFMU of the season will be on Monday 4 September 2017, and as has been a little bit of a tradition we will accompany it with a “best of” album length download. Listen live at 6-7pm on WFMU and join in the live playlist and comments.
We are very pleased to let you know that we have another release on the wonderful label Discrepant. Brave new old work by Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us. A journey into her early radio experiments with some dating back 20 years!
Since Autumn 2003 People Like Us have been doing a weekly show on WFMU, called DO or DIY. The aim of the show is to mix highbrow with lowbrow to challenge whether there is much difference. Archived playlists of at least 200 shows from 2003 to the present day can be found at www.wfmu.org/peoplelikeus
Vicki Bennett also curated/programmed RADIO BOREDCAST in Winter 2011/Spring 2012. It was first broadcast on basic.fm and now is archived at WFMU. More recently, Vicki Bennett has programmed OPTIMIZED!, a week-long expanded radio stream on WFMU 6-10 June 2016.
Subscribe to the Podcast of DO or DIY by clicking here – it will prompt your iTunes program to open, where you will receive the podcasts.
About DO or DIY
DO or DIY is a freeform sound art radio show broadcast weekly by Vicki Bennett (project name People Like Us) on WFMU.
The philosophy behind the show is simple. That within the realms of avant-garde and experimental sound art the goalposts defining “accessible” and “inaccessible” are constantly moving. As the radar rises and dips, fragments and shards of underground creations unearth, and popular culture and artist resonate, shifting shapes accordingly with one another in reflections of changing spotlights.
The avant-garde and popular culture rely on each other’s energy. People Like Us collage both “hard to listen” works and popular listening matter, showing that in fact, beyond the restrictions of genre, genre IS the restriction and it is possible to like many kinds of art and music. The key is finding the door – DO or DIY leads the way into new and unusual realms of listening and hope to show the way in.
Each show consists of collages made of sound works from the 20th and 21st century, often layered and looped many times over, resulting in an album type effect on each show.
The pun “All Things Avant-Retard”, a rhyme with “All Things Avant-Garde” literally means All Things Forward-Backwards. Essentially by using sonic extremes and apparent opposites we find some sort of central point or balanced perspective on music and sound.
Suggested Listening: DO or DIY fill in for Ken.
New Free WFMU iPhone/iPod Touch app!
Also, if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch we are also pleased to announce that you can listen to not only the regular WFMU stream on the move at a glorious 128k, but also all of our special streams, recent DJ show archives and DJ podcasts including all of DO or DIY!
You can download the much improved updated free WFMU app right here.
Monday, July 17th, 6pm – 7pm EST
on DO or DIY with People Like Us on WFMU
http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/73648
Gwilly Edmondez is all over the place yet usually in the wrong place at the right time. As an improvisor and recording artist he tries to play as often as possible with anyone who’s game, or solo if no one is about. What he uses mostly is his voice, but is always searching for things to go with it, like samples, tapes and beats. Anything could happen, which is why Gwilly prefers to act at the very fringes of proper. He has collaborated with all sorts of people but his primary non-solo projects at the moment are YEAH YOU (with Elvin Brandhi), Kleevex (with Faye MacCalman) and Impossibility Knox (with Odie Ji Ghast and sometimes THF Drenching).
Monday, July 3rd, 6pm – 7pm EST
on DO or DIY with People Like Us on WFMU
Dominic Robertson aka Ergo Phizmiz
One Summer’s morning Vicki Bennett was visited by Dominic Robertson aka the composer, writer, theatre director and collagist Ergo Phizmiz. He brought with him stories of political prophecy, homemade opera, and laments on the death of the internet-of-dreams.
Over The Edge
DO or DIY with People Like Us – Monday, 19 June 2017 – 6pm
https://wfmu.org/playlists/pl
From 1981 to 2015, Negativland‘s Don Joyce hosted Over The Edge, the longest running block of freeform live mix collage radio in broadcast history — a program which continues today, having been inherited by long time show participant and collaborator Jon Leidecker. In this very Wobbly interview, Vicki and Jon discuss the history of collage radio, and the slow evolution of the Edge, as well as its many possible futures, both True and False.
http://www.detritus.net/wobbly/ | https://archive.org/details/ote
If you are by the radio or internet on Wednesday 21 December between 9am-noon NY time (that’s 2-5pm UK friends) then tune in to a mega 3-hour DO or DIY with People Like Us on WFMU with your radio host Vicki and 20,000 mp3s. Listen on the live link at http://wfmu.org/ at the time, and join us on the Comments Board and follow the live playlist at https://wfmu.org/
