30 April 2008
2 new albums - Rhapsody in Glue and Smiling Through My Teeth

We're been having a mad rush to get the new album finished, mastered and have it in place on the night of the opening of the People Like Us Retrospective in Newcastle. The album title is "Rhapsody in Glue" - an online-only release available at a budget price from 15th May at bleep.com with no digital rights management so you can share it with ease. Once this is available from there we will post the information here and to our mailing list. The starting point of this album was the podcast series Codpaste, which has now been more than expanded upon to make a full album's worth of leestening pleasure.

In the meantime the People Like Us-curated Sonic Arts Network CD "Smiling Through My Teeth" is also currently being pressed, ready for the launch night, also in Newcastle. There will be a full mailout in mid-May, if you wish to receive this please subscribe to our mailing list.

14 April 2008
PLU and Ergo Live at York - mp3 excerpt

Download it here - thanks Tony Myatt for recording this.

10 April 2008
DO or DIY 3 Hour Special on WFMU

DO or DIY with People Like Us will be broadcasting a 3 hour long web-only special on WFMU on Thursday 10th April from 6-9am NY time.
That's 11am-2pm UK time!

Tune in live here and check out the live playlisting from Vicki.

The show will be archived at http://wfmu.org/playlists/PL afterwards and will arrive as a podcast if you are subscribed to DO or DIY at wfmu.org.

22 March 2008
US premiere of Work, Rest & Play at Other Cinema, SF

As part of their new spring schedule, Other Cinema will be presenting an evening of Expanded Cinema, including a US premiere of People Like Us's triptych Work, Rest & Play. If you are in the area go and enjoy the delights of Other Cinema, hosted by your host with the most, Craig Baldwin.

20 March 2008
What's next, you may well ask?

Whoooooshhh... well actually not at all! For the next 6 weeks People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz will be developing all the beginnings of songs forming in the Codpaste into something nice and solid, such as an album! Also Vicki is preparing various artworks, designs etc for a full People Like Us Retrospective in a gallery from May to July, details coming up on that in the next couple of weeks. Also DO and DIY continues as a WFMU podcast. Our gig went down very well at Sightsonic, so we are now officially available to book as a duo concert, if you happen to have the venue and the money. Or rather then money and the venue. Here are a couple of pictures from the Sightsonic concert in York's beautiful National Centre For Early Music.

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz Live at Sightsonic

14-15 March 2008
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz play...
SightSonic 2008 - York International Festival of Digital Arts

We are pleased to People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz will be playing a double bill, both separately and also a rare duo performance as part of York International Festival of Digital Arts. This will take place at the National Centre for Early Music on Friday 14th March between 7.30pm and 9.30pm. More info and tickets available at the SightSonic website. On 15th March Vicki will also be doing an artist talk, also as part of the festival at York St John University (YSJU), in Fountains Lecture Theatre. The talk is scheduled for around 11.30am, and will last about an hour.

10 March 2008
The Return of Codpaste

After three weeks off for the WFMU marathon and to catch up in general, Codpaste podcast on WFMU returns! The episode on the 10th March is the penultimate edition, with a grand extended finale, busting it's way to your podcast inbox on the 17th March. After this, although the podcast ends, the project is FAR from over, in fact it's just the beginning of the next chapter, when Vicki and Ergo make an album from the material!

Codpaste page
WFMU playlists

3 December 2007 - March 2008

We are pleased to announce Codpaste - a new weekly podcast series brought to you by People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz, who will be teaming up and trying to compose collage music for you... with emphasis on the word "trying." It's reasonably rare that music is broadcast to you when it's not all finished, polished and dusted, but we're going to spew out the guts and gore to you, dear listener, so do bring a spoon.

From Monday 3rd December 2007, WFMU will be hosting the podcasts of:

(i) audio sources, the tracks used as the basis for the collage in the episode
(ii) sketches, mixes, and collages combining track elements with added instrumentation, electronics, vocals, etc.
(iii) fragments, layers, and multitracks of the collage compositions

These elements will be tied together by snippets of light-hearted, tangential conversations and introductions and occasional mental overload and verbal meltdown.

Subscribe to this free weekly podcast by visiting WFMU's Podcast page. Or you can go straight to iTunes, go to the menu bar, then Advanced, then Subscribe to Podcast and paste this in http://wfmu.org/podcast/CT.xml and iTunes will do the rest for you. The podcast proper starts on Monday 3rd December, but in the meantime you'll get a little welcome message.

We're having great fun recording this and we think it will reflect in the program. Do try it out here -

Episode 1 - 3rd December 2007 - Cartoon Music - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25395
Episode 2 - 10th December 2007 - The Chase - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25405
Episode 3 - 17th December 2007 - Hooked On Classics - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25406
Episode 4 - 24th December 2007 - ThEdit - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25429
Episode 5 - 31st December 2007 - Fwms Bo Wo - http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25530
Episode 6 - 7th January 2008 - Snow Day - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25533
Episode 7 - 14th January 2008 - Banjos, Pots, Pans and Squeezeboxes - http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25819
Episode 8 - 21st January 2008 - Collage - http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25942
Episode 9 - 28th January 2008 - I Can't Tell A Waltz From A Tango - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25966
Episode 10 - 4th February 2008 - Nana Mouskouri - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25655
Episode 11 - 11th February 2008 - Song Song - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/25970
Episode 12 - 18th February 2008 - Comedy - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/26276
Episode 13 - 10th March 2008 - Easy Listening - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/26488
Episode 14 - 17th March 2008 - Finale - http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/shows/26515 - and at the WFMU blog

Further program information can be found here.

28 February 2008
DO or DIY returns to your podcast inbox

After a few weeks off, DO or DIY with People Like Us has returned, and will continue to return every two weeks for the next few weeks, and then after that will return weekly. Playlists and Archives remain at http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/PL

25 February - 9 March 2008
WFMU Fundraising Marathon 2008

Happy Birthday to WFMU! The oldest freeform radio station is now 50 Years Old!! But this is not an excuse to become complacent. WFMU needs you.We at WFMU rely on our listeners to show appreciation for the station during these two weeks of the year in order to pay for all the costs involved in running the station, getting the radio shows, internet streams and podcasts to you. We hope you appreciate how special and unique WFMU is, and even in it's 50th year, it should by no means be taken for granted. There are so many things that are no longer existing because of the lack of attention and care from so many people that often benefit the most from such creative endeavours. Please pledge now to WFMU, and help us to keep making this work. Put your money where your mouse is, we know we are. We, People Like Us don't know what we would do without our friends and listeners at WFMU.

How This Works...

Support Freeform Radio! Your Name Your Email Your Pledge $ Add this banner to your site!

More information here

28 February - 8 March 2008
Now Hear This

We are pleased to announce that Forma have commissioned People Like Us to make a series of new soundworks for "Now Hear This", which forms part of the larger AV Festival.

Now Hear This is a series of site–specific audio works presented in various public spaces across Middlesbrough. Encompassing several new commissions, the project features audio works by artists selected for their various interests in the complex relationships between sound, space and location. Adopting diverse modes of broadcast and public address, Now Hear This offers a range of listening experiences and unexpected sonic interventions into our everyday urban environment, creating surprising and engaging encounters with broadcast material. Commissions include new sound works by British artists Marcus Coates, Zoe Irvine and People Like Us.

Pair up with People Like Us for a series of misfiring musical arrangements, exploring the entertaining aspects of miscommunication, disharmony, bad connections and missed calls.

Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us) will produce a series of short audio works to be broadcast via Bluetooth in Middlesbrough Town Centre. These brief musical compositions explore the humorous side to communication breakdowns in all their varied and surprising forms. These tracks, in mp3 form, are available now for download, day by day, as they are released on location into the ether. Get them at http://www.nowhearthis.org.uk/

To experience Breaking Waves, take a Bluetooth enabled device (such as a mobile phone) within close proximity of the Bluetooth broadcaster – look out for the poster site situated in front of Bhs on Linthorpe Road, in Middlesbrough's central shopping area. The broadcaster will emit a notification that gives the option to download and listen.

23 December 2007 (from)
Listen to DO or DIY in Australian national radio!

Starting 23rd December for several weeks of their summer season on ABC Radio National, the radio program The Night Air will be rebroadcasting People Like Us's show, DO or DIY on WFMU - this means you can tune in on your transistor radio or online, or listen afterwards to the archive. Go along to their website now and check it out - the program details for the first episode are here. People Like Us guested on The Night Air back in 2001, alongside friends Irene Moon and The Evolution Control Committee - you can hear that here.

3 December 2007 - March 2008
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz
Special podcast series: Codpaste
advance news - starting 3rd December on WFMU

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz will be making an album... but it will be different to usual processes - we are going to let you in on the whole thing and document the making as a series of weekly podcasts, the first starting on 3rd December. More info pages coming very soon now!

6 November 2007
DO or DIY resumes!

After a month off, we have now resumed weekly podcasting of DO or DIY on WFMU - the next podcast will hit your iTunes next time you open it up, if you are already subscribed. You can subscribe for free by opening up iTunes, going to the menu at the top of your screen, clicking on Advanced, then Subscribe to Podcast, then copy this from below and paste it in.

http://wfmu.org/podcast/PL.xml

Then it will arrive all by itself. Amazing.

4 October 2007
Final DO or DIY radio show of the season
with downloadable album on WFMU blog

In keeping with what is now becoming a tradition, the last on air edition of DO or DIY with People Like Us is being delivered alongside an album
sized chunk of a megamix with the bitesize title of "Wet Sounds - The Best Of All Things Particularly Avant Retard 2007". Not only that, but it has
fantastico artwork and a delectable bonus 15 minutes on top of what we are playing on the last show of the season. AND no mic breaks prattling on
while you're trying to relax and realign your soul to this calming and cooling sonic breeze. People Like Us will be taking the next season off, but will resume podcasting in November, after a short break, so stay detuned.

Listen to an archive after the show

Go to the WFMU blog after the show and download the album

22 September 2007
See "Work, Rest & Play" in Sheffield this Winter

Earlier this year Vicki completed a 3-screen A/V piece called "Work, Rest & Play" for Lovebytes, and we now can tell you that it will be presented by Lovebytes with Millennium Galleries from 7th November 2007 to 15th February 2008 in the foyer of Millennium Galleries in Sheffield. After this point we want to make it available for film festival distribution, like previous works. 

2 August 2007
Download "Honeysuckle Boulevard" at the WFMU Blog!

The online edition of People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz's album, "Honeysuckle Boulevard", which came out at the beginning of 2007 as a free ten inch vinyl release and is now deleted, can now be downloaded for free at the WFMU Blog here. It includes vinyl label artwork, an info text file and also two bonus tracks. The bonus tracks have never before been made available for release or download.

Download the audio either as a zip file containing all the tracks, or grab each individual MP3. So off you go now to the WFMU Blog at http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/08/honesuckle-boul.html

28 June 2007
"Perpetuum Mobile" packaging mentioned in De:Bug

De:Bug have done a feature on the packaging of our album, in relation to our manufacturing it on a very local level in India.
http://www.de-bug.de/texte/4953.html

10 June 2007
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz podcasts

Vicki and Ergo are pleased to announce that they will be working on a podcast series through the next year - details coming up sometime next month. To keep up to date on this why not subscribe to the mailing list.

10 June 2007
"Perpetuum Mobile" reviews
Our album has been getting some great reviews, scroll to the bottom section here to have a look.

8 June 2007
"On The Rooftops Of London" for sale

Due to popular demand we've made a CD Single available of the radio session we did for Mixing It on BBC Radio 3, since otherwise it would never be heard again since Mixing It is no more on the station. You can get it here.

7 June - 4 October 2007
People Like Us return to the WFMU Summer Season

People Like Us will return to terrestrial radio and their one hour weekly show for the Summer Season on WFMU. The show starts on Thursday 7th June and will run weekly until 4 October, when People Like Us will revert back to making podcast only shows for the Winter Season. Tune in live every week and follow the accuplaylist at 6pm Thursdays NY time, that is 11pm Thursdays UK time. Alternatively you can tune in afterwards, and to archive shows, at http://www.wfmu.org/playlists/PL. You can also subscribe as ever to the ongoing podcast (copy and paste this link into iTunes/Advanced)Here's the New WFMU Schedule

1 June 2007
People Like Us 20 minute megamix on Radio Eins

People Like Us have done an exclusive mix for Ocean Club Radio on Radio Eins in Berlin - it will be aired between 23:00 and 1:00 on Radio Eins 95.8fm, and repeated Sunday nights at 1am (both Berlin time). The show is also archived, follow the links below.Radio Eins - Ocean Club Radio
Archive - once it's been airedPlaylist:People Like Us - Intro
People Like Us - People Like You
People Like Us - Blue Bayou
People Like Us - Music Of Your Own
People Like Us - Blue Bayou
People Like Us - Gongexeva
People Like Us - The Doody Waltz
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz - A Bastards Waltz
People Like Us - Stand By Your
People Like Us - Bran Mash & Crushed Beans (excerpt)
People Like Us - Bier Bier Bier Downtown
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz - Bad Restaurant Boogie
People Like Us - Bran Mash & Crushed Beans (excerpt)
People Like Us - We're Going To Be Around

1 June 2007
Selling our last few copies of "Honeysuckle Boulevard" 10 inch

Showroom Cinema 3, Sheffield
Vicki Bennett introduced a special preview of "Work, Rest & Play". This 14 minute long three screen video work, combining animation and re-contextualised found film footage, has been commissioned by Lovebytes and Sheffield's Millennium Galleries for exhibition in Autumn 2007. Website information hereStills here:

Vicki Bennett/People Like Us will be featured significantly in a new book entitled "The Fundamentals of Sonic Art and Design" by Tony Gibbs. You can buy it from many retailers including Amazon. More info here: "Sonic Art and Sound Design is a technical and conceptually creative field with no one comprehensive definition; it encompasses music technology, computer programming, fine art and performance. It engages with the art of sound in ground breaking and exciting ways. The Fundamentals of Sonic Art and Sound Design by Tony Gibbs is the first academic book of its kind and defines and teaches this subject in a creative and stimulating way. It explores the worlds of sonic art and sound design through their history and development as distinct subjects. Looking at new and radical approaches to sound recording, performance, installation works and exhibition. AVA proudly present The Fundamentals of Sonic Art and Sound Design as the first academic text book that not only challenges whatÕs currently available but as with all AVA titles is created to visually stimulate as well as educate through an informative, comprehensive introduction to this exciting new subject."

23 April 2007
People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz
"Perpetuum Mobile" CD

Buy it here.
Hear a sneak preview of "Soggy Style" by People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz
and "Ghosts Before Breakfast" by People Like Us & Ergo PhizmizHuw Stephens has been playiing this on his radio show on BBC Radio 1.Press Release:

PEOPLE LIKE US & ERGO PHIZMIZ "PERPETUUM MOBILE"

"Perpetuum Mobile" is the result of a uniquely schizophrenic "open source" compositional process: the UK's finest collage composers (collage-posers?) Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us (aka Vicki Bennett) uploaded files to a shared server, downloaded and processed each other's work, and flung the resulting fragments back at each other. The result is an interpenetrating audio-collage so intricate that neither party can recall who did what to whom. So far, so avant-garde; but what makes this record different is that Ergo and Vicki then wrote and sang their own vocals on top of their Frankenstein creation. Here you will find slyly absurdist lyrics replete with monkeys, carousels, trousers, apple trees, tinkling bells, dogs, sausages, whiskey, and cannibalism. No matter how fraught with trauma, these ballads and ditties are sung with a straight face and mixed front and center, and the results feel like 1930s British music hall standards from an alternate universe: half Ivor Cutler, half George Formby. The astonishing thing is that for all this jiggery-pokery, "Perpetuum Mobile" makes for an exhilarating, remarkably fresh pop album. It works.On "Ghosts Before Breakfast" Ergo and Vicki proudly declare that they've got "quite a selection of pastry", and if the profusion of cuckoo clocks, gunshots, horn farts, string vamps, and digital malfeasance which go hurtling through this opening track is any indication, that's no idle boast. For sheer cornucopia of sonic raw materials, this track's avalanche of information sets the tone for the overflowing, manic record that follows. There's far too much to fully parse, but among the highlights: "Beyond Perpetuum" pushes off from the Comedian Harmonists' take on the 19th century compositional craze for "moto perpetuo" runs of continuous notes at a rapid tempo, and folds found piano, voice and strings into an interlocking array of M.C. Escher harmonic stairways. "Air Hostess" is detourned lounge pop that stitches together Nelson Riddle's "Ya Ya" theme to "Lolita", "Walk Right In", light operettas, organ, bachelor pad cha cha and mambo, and nervously twitching shards of Louis Armstrong. "Pierrot's Persecution Mania" bravely explores the possibilities of a Montparnasse-via-Dixieland hybrid of can-can and bluegrass, with ridiculous canned strings colliding with jew's harp boings, while "Soggy Style" rides banjo twangs, a digital bossa nova breakdown, and the "whooo-ooes" nicked from Terry Stafford's "Suspicion". Living up to the perpetual motion of its title and cock-a-hoop cover art, this is a frantically energetic music whose layered repetitions become cumulatively more disorienting and preposterous as they loop back. "Perpetuum Mobile" goes beyond the stealth-oldies nostalgia of the mashup scene and the "culture-jamming" rhetoric of plunderphonics, and shows Mr. Ergo and Ms. Vicki to be a potent, if Surrealist, songwriting team, and together they braid oddly affecting vocals and their trademark stolen audio into twenty-first century pop. Like the perpetual motion machines for which it is named, this collaboration will run and run and run and run and run and run and run . . .

21 March 2007
New weekly free People Like Us podcast begins

As a stopgap between Summer Season broadcasts and 3 hour occasional webcasts on WFMU we have decided to start a weekly podcast through wfmu.org. At the moment if you are subscribed to the PLU podcast at the fmu site you will be receiving archived shows from the last season of DO or DIY and the occasional three hour show. But shortly after the end of the WFMU marathon you will be able to receive around 15 to 20 mins of DO or DIY programming every Wednesday or every time you open up your iTunes after each Wednesday. You don't have to do a thing once you have subscribed. Subscribe to the DO or DIY with People Like Us podcast at the link below. There is also simple technical information for first time podcast subscribers.http://wfmu.org/podcastThere is a direct link here:
http://wfmu.org/podcast/PL.xml - copy and paste that link into iTunes/Advanced/Subscribe to Podcast...

25 March 2007
Honeysuckle Boulevard offer now expired.

If we sent you a voucher already then you can still collect your copy from your store by 31 March, and not after. All records left sitting in the stores are now SPOKEN FOR, by people who already requested and received their vouchers.

Thanks to everybody who pledged and helped push us over our goal!! As of 12:15 AM Monday, we had surpassed our goal by seven thousand dollars and can now busy ourselves with the promise of another year of great freeform radio! You are the most wonderful audience in the world and we are proud to be here for you now and into tomorrow. Onward!!!

In Spring 2007 we are pleased to announce the release of a brand new full length CD - for general release/sale worldwide, on Soleilmoon Recordings. It is now finished and ready to be manufactured, and we are very pleased with the results - a leap forward. The artwork is currently being printed in Bombay... here

Hear a sneak preview here of "Soggy Style" by People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz

20 December 2006
Download a seasonal radio show
on the WFMU website

Here is another chance to not only hear but download the Xmas edition of DO or DIY with People Like Us from 2003, with Special Guest and now WFMU DJ, Ergo Phizmiz!Êhttp://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/12/people_like_us_.html

14th December 2006
3 Hour Special of DO or DIY on WFMU

People Like Us broadcast a web-only edition of DO or DIY on WFMU on 14th December.
Find the show archived here

As mentioned in our October 2006 update - Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us are releasing a free 10".We will be releasing the list of stores in January along with details on how to obtain a voucher to collect one 10" record for free. If you are a store and were interested in stocking the records, sorry - but we now have enough hosts in the UK, Continent and US.If you want to stay up to date on this project and are interested in getting a copy of the record then subscribe to our MAILING LIST and we will keep you up to date (in early January)

(Thanks to Irene Moon for helping this page to not be 200 miles wide. Grrr)

You can buy it below, but here's a preview from our new CD - it would be the title track if it was the title..
DOWNLOAD "Stand By Your"

People Like Us New Release
Only available HERE:

People Like Us proudly present 27 minutes of new songs following visits to several music libraries, and appropriating favourites from the western world into a musical pantomime. All new material recorded in 2006, never before released in any form.Contains:

1. Blue Bayou
2. Everyday
3. Crazy
4. Stand By Your
5. Green, Green Grass
6. I Walk The Line
7. Singin' In The Shower

UK CD price: $14

EUROPE CD price: $15

ELSEWHERE CD price: $18

You can buy the People Like Us DVD
"Story Without End" HERE:

Story Without End DVD
Released Autumn 2005
4 Short Films by People Like Us
Design by Joerg Hartmannsgruber
& People Like UsSonic Arts Network proudly presents a collection of short films by leading British A/V artist People Like Us, a true champion of a particularly English sense of humour.
The DVD shows a journey though a multi-layered 20th Century, represented by bright eyed and enthusiastic images of the modern world, concluding with the new Sonic Arts Network commission 'Story Without End'. Comes in beautiful fold out packaging.

Contains:
We Edit Life
The RemoteController
Resemblage
Story Without End

UK DVD price: $18

EUROPE DVD price: $20

ELSEWHERE DVD price: $23