Welcome to the only official site for People Like Us and Vicki Bennett
Rather surprised and very pleased to see that The Mirror just made it to No.8 in The Wire Magazine‘s top releases of the year chart. Buy The Mirror here: https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/the-mirror
We’ve moved as much of our shop as we can over to bandcamp – which not only sells digital but also merchandise (CDs, records, cassettes). The link below is still managed by us as well as any necessary visits to the post office, it’s just a lot easier to use than going through our website, and gets us more random traffic too đ https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/
Courtesy of our friends Discrepant, our album The Mirror is now out on vinyl!
Buy direct from us through bandcamp –
Click on the link below and scroll to “The Mirror Vinyl LP” in the left hand column and click on that to buy. Shipping date is expected for 18 October 2019.
Includes digital album of The Mirror.
Also available on CD from the same bandcamp page.
Tracks on the vinyl version of The Mirror:
A1 The Mirror
A2 Do You See What I Hear
A3 Step Inside
B1 Free My Prayer
B2 The Other Side
B3 Forever
B4 Till The End of Time
Previously released on CD accompanied by âGone, Gone Beyondâ, âThe Mirrorâ is the dreamy soundtrack of an a/v project from collage artist extraordinaire Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us. With ââThe Mirrorââ Bennett continues her eternal disassembling of popular music by exploring how the narrative of familiar sounds/songs can change dramatically under a new context, with that context always changing, in a never-ending flow. Each song is singular. And each song is a collage of and undefined number of other songs from other artists. It sounds familiar because that has been the modus operandi of People Like Us since the early 1990s. But âThe Mirrorâ plays with the notion of familiar, driving around a collection of famous pop songs/artists, messing around with the memory of the listener and, of course, his unique comprehension of those specific songs applied in a new context. Because of the use of familiar pop sounds, âThe Mirrorâ is often grandiose. Like an epic film only with highs, never letting the listener down or letting him doubt the power of pop. Even, of course, when the coordinates are twisted, mixed, over or underrepresented. Each moment feels like something that could only happen in a parallel universe. Although that may sound naĂŻve, itâs just a lost thought of reaction to the beautiful collages of People Like Us in âThe Mirrorâ. This mirror doesnât reflect an image of ourselves or an image of pop. But an image on the way memories drift and are being constant rebuilt. An unfinished collage. — Discrepant
Pressing Information
One time pressing of 500 units
Mastered by Mark Gergis
Cut by Rashad Becker
We’ve just made available a new track from the hour-long Gone, Gone Beyond (work still in progress)… click above ^^^
To coincide with a few concerts that we’ve been doing lately, we’ve put some “Retrospective” mp3s up on bandcamp from the first 25 years of People Like Us. You can download it here or click below.
This is a 100 track compilation, over 6 hours duration, representing some of our favourite tracks and collaborations over radio, on stage and in the studio from 1991, which was when we released our first album. Each track has a different flavour, from a different time, another place, and often associated with a different recording medium or varying groups of individuals who inspired or actually took part.
Thank you friends, listeners and collaborators for being around, and for all those who inspired and supported the journey so far. Making this available at a Nice Price considering the ridiculous volume of content, and as is the case for much of People Like Us, you can quite possibly find a lot of this in various forms elsewhere on the internet for free, either put there by us, or others. But if you’d like to support us, then we thank you and welcome that. It will help make more happen.Â
Bandcamp requires that we upload in lossless form, and we will be honest and say that a lot of this only exists as mp3, but really…. most of what we sampled was also initially in mp3 form.
Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us returns to Sucata Tapes with another epic radio collage from the archives. You can buy the cassette (with a digital download included from us or Discrepant, and if you want just the digital download then get direct form Discrepant.
âThe work of People Like Us rests gingerly between two dangerous positions: on the one hand, the risk of fashioning merely stylish pastiche out of borrowed finery for the sake of self-conscious kitschiness; on the other hand, the risk of making simplistic, heavy handedly âtopicalâ audio-jokes at the expense of oneâs raw material to a smug effect. If the lounge creeps uncritically snack on their sonic ingredients and coast on being âgroovyâ, the cads of pseudo-critique take cheap shots at straw men and call it subversion. Happily, Vicki Bennett has yet to fall down either precipice, but yodels down contentedly from her own Alpine audio-cottage. There, with loving care, she snips and tucks at the lycra jumpsuit until the fit is snug, places every plastic shrub on the Happy Valley Ranch just so, and throws another dance record on the bonfire. Undercutting her own utopian mirages with formal breakdowns and sneaky semantic pranks, Vicki Bennett is One Funny Lady, with a deadly sense of comic timing that puts her in my personal pantheon of edit intensive music makers: -Steinski and Mass Media, Hank Shocklee, Tod Dockstader, Teo Macero, the Hanatarash, John Oswald, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock. Serving her birthday cake with a turd, her gags are always lined with a virulent creep factor. You get the feeling that the vacancy and pointlessness of empty speech is being lampooned and mourned in equal measure. In sticking to this balance of celebration and critique, People Like Us genuinely hates and loves People Like You. The least you can do is head up to the Happy Valley Ranch for a spell and have a listen.â â Drew Daniel
PEOPLE LIKE US “THE MIRROR”
LIMITED EDITION (500) CD & DIGITAL DOWNLOAD
Cutting Hedge SNIP002 (available initially mailorder only from us)
RELEASE DATE 1 OCTOBER 2018Â
This album contains all new audio work, sourced from both our live a/v performance The Mirror [2018], and also from Gone, Gone Beyond [2017+], our ongoing 360 surround cinema work. It also contains additional tracks composed during the creation of these pieces that never were used.
We are joined on two tracks by Ergo Phizmiz, and the packaging has artwork from the above works and also specially made for the CD. Two collages are made in collaboration with other artists Peter Knight and Hearty White. The CD was mastered by Mark Gergis.
People Like Us / Matmos / Wobbly “Wide Open Spaces” LP (CREP52)
Release Date: 23rd February 2018 (taking pre-orders now)
Discrepant is pleased to announce the reissue of a âWide Open Spacesâ, a collaborative LP by Wobbly, People Like Us and Matmos.
You can purchase directly from us through our bandcamp site:
https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/people-like-us-matmos-wobbly-wide-open-spaces
Yes! A NEW PEOPLE LIKE US ALBUM! The never before released soundtrack to the People Like Us live a/v performance (and now stand alone film) Citation City.
Buy it here now on bandcamp:Â
https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/citation-city-ost
We now have a Bandcamp page, where you can purchase selected old releases in digital form. We make our best effort to put a lot of our stuff online for free but here you can get it in higher quality for a cheap price, and help offset our costs so we can make more work.
https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/
We’ve been inspired by the range and vastness of DIY music that has been put onto this platform. The most important thing is networking and access to networks and information.
On Discrepant:Â
PEOPLE LIKE US & POREST â OPTIMIZED! [CREP49]
People Like Us “All On A Beautiful Day”
Porest “The Parallel Broadcasts”
Shipping November 2017
You can purchase direct from our bandcamp page:
https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/people-like-us-porest-optimized
The Parallel Broadcasts presents Porestâs recordings from the covert sector of his archives. Culled from shortwave and FM broadcasts, these selections were intercepted via prepared radio â finely tuned to receive what is known in certain circles as parallel broadcasting. Content explores the trauma of emerging global consciousness, acute cultural antipology and the urgent placement of democratic music today.
Recorded on location in Jan/Feb, 2016 â Featuring contributions from Paul Staufenbiel and Michael Darr
All On A Beautiful Day was recorded in Spring 2016 by People Like Us for “Optimized!” – a week-long online a/v radio station programmed by Vicki Bennett, housed on WFMU.org which experimented with ideas of what radio might be in the world of high speed internet broadcasting. The content included 26 new a/v artist works, including both this and Porestâs Parallel Broadcasts, where people were invited to respond to the word “optimized”.
We are very pleased to let you know that we have another release on the wonderful label Discrepant. Â Brave new old work by Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us. A journey into her early radio experiments with some dating back 20 years!
Vicki Bennettâs People Like Us began life as a three hour radio show on Brightonâs Festival Radio in 1990 called Gobstopper. She went on to release around 20 solo albums based on her radio sound collages, and after a decade working primarily with sound, has increasingly worked with film and images. She has recently produced collage and multi-screen, multi-speaker work, including 2013âs touring film and performance piece Notations, a film used as a score for improvising musicians, and Gone, Gone Beyond (2017++), a 10 screen, 8 speaker immersive cinema work for Recombinant Media Labâs CineChamber.
Continue reading “Early Radio Works Vol. I – New Cassette Release”