Print Edition coincides solo gallery show in London

Title: Streetwalking
Medium: C-Type Print on Matt Fuji Archive Paper
Dimensions: 914mm x 321mm
Year: 2011
Edition: 100 + 5 A/P

Title: In Retrospect
Medium: C-Type Print on Matt Fuji Archive Paper
Dimensions: 671mm x 392mm
Year: 2011
Edition: 100 + 5 A/Ps
Co-published by Modern Empire and Vitrine Gallery

Streetwalking” and “In Retrospect” form part of a new series of digital collage works included in Vicki Bennett’s forthcoming exhibition at Vitrine Gallery. Bennett uses a unique technique to expand film scenes beyond their conventional screen ratio. The finished results reveal beautiful panoramic views of the background landscapes as captured by the panning camera, effectively allowing film scenes to be seen as never before.

Bearing a relation to the British Vorticism movement of the early 20th Century, Bennett takes a Futurist approach to image making, attempting to capture dynamic movement with still images. She often utilises digital technology to apply analogue techniques and for more than a decade has used rotoscoping in her short films and live audio-visual performance to mask, cut and place objects elsewhere on screen. During her commission for The Great North Run Cultural Programme 2009 she developed the process for expanding film outside its frame and began work on this new series shortly after.

More on the Vitrine Gallery solo exhibition The Doors Of Perception here:
https://peoplelikeus.org/2011/the-doors-of-perspection-people-like-us-exhibition

In Retrospect and Streetwalking are available as limited edition C-type prints. They can be purchased separately or as a pair

“Welcome Abroad” – People Like Us (Illegal Art 2011)

“Welcome Abroad” by People Like Us
Release date: 24 May 2011
Illegal Art IA124 http://www.illegalart.net

UK – price including P&P: $11.00
Buy in UK

EUROPE – price including P&P: $12.00

Buy in rest of Europe

ELSEWHERE – price including P&P: $13.00
Buy in rest of world

“Welcome Abroad is the soundtrack to a dream – overlaying a cabaret with the circus, a music hall with the radio, a nightclub with the movies. Finely tuned sounds from the collective unconscious, fitted together with care and clarity and skill, producing a hallucinatory landscape that shifts and slides, shimmering with each new sample. Julie Andrews duets with Jim Morrison? Damn.” –Steinski

Vicki Bennett, under the People Like Us moniker, returns from several collaborations for her first solo album in several years. Stranded in the United States for an extended period after the Icelandic volcano eruption blocked her British homeland’s airspace, Bennett derived thematic material of displacement, travel, and a longing for elsewhere, from the natural disaster that caused her own predicament. Volcanically marooned in Baltimore and NYC, Bennett utilized some of her “free” time to work on the album and even gained audio contributions from fellow experimental musicians Jason Willett (of Half Japanese) and M.C. Schmidt (of Matmos) via her extended stay.

Taking a glance at just a few tracks from Welcome Abroad, songs from The Beatles, Ennio Morricone, Danny Kaye, Bob Dylan, Rod McKuen, Elton John, Gene Pitney, Elvis Presley, Dionne Warwick, John Denver, Julie London, and Queen are all amalgamated.  While recent mashup culture often centers on the instant gratification of seamlessly juxtaposing hooks, People Like Us tracks transform the source material into collages that are equal parts dissonance and pleasure, making artful commentaries on our culture and Bennett’s own existential amusement within such a wondrous world.

With the release of Welcome Abroad, lllegal Art continues to embrace a pay-what-you-want business model for high-quality downloads. All label releases over the last five years have been issued (or reissued) under a the flexible payment system. People Like Us also have a history of offering free downloads of entire projects, both new and old. Vicki Bennett is such a firm endorser of the gift economy that she is the top downloaded audio artist on UbuWeb.

This Is Light Music Picture Disc LP

As part of the Prints of Darkness exhibition at http://www.edinburgh-printmakers.co.uk/ from 17 July to 04 September 2010, People Like Us have been commissioned to make a vinyl picture disc responding to the title theme of the exhibition.

This Is Light Music will be available for shipping to you from the second week in August. You can pre-order here. Please note – if you are intending to buy the print that Vicki was commissioned to do, please contact Edinburgh Printmakers through the above website url, since they are offering the record free to the first 20 people buying a print. Prices below in US Dollars include postage and packing.

THIS ITEM IS SOLD OUT WHEN BOUGHT DIRECTLY FROM US. IF YOU WOULD LIKE A COPY PLEASE GO TO THE EDINBURGH PRINTMAKERS WEBSITE AND ORDER FROM THEM. ALL REMAINING ORDERS WILL BE SENT FROM US TODAY (18 SEPTEMBER 2010)

http://www.edinburgh-printmakers.co.uk/

Please note – this LP costs more than some other merchandise you may have bought from us – this is because of the nature of the item, in that the gallery needed to cover costs, etc, plus it costs more to post this kind of item. We assure you we always try and make things available as cheaply as we can!

For more info on the exhibition and how we responded to the task here:
http://www.peoplelikeus.org/2010/people_like_us_new_record_and_print_in_edinburgh_exhibition.html

Dates of Exhibition: 17 July to 04 September 2010
Opening Hours: Weekly Tuesday – Saturday 10.00am – 6.00pm
CLOSED SUNDAY & MONDAYS
Admission: Free
Venue: Edinburgh Printmakers, 23 Union Street, Edinburgh, EH1 3LR
Telephone: 0131 557 2479
Website: www.edinburgh-printmakers.co.uk

People Like Us & Wobbly – Music For The Fire

Release date 15 June 2010

The fruit of many years of work, this album began as People Like Us & Wobbly collected and collaged their way through various depictions of misfired communications and heartbreak sourced from popular culture for a series of live improvisations. Music For The Fire is a plunderphonic concept album depicting the lifespan of a relationship, as told through samples of hundreds of different songs and voices who had no idea they were all telling the same story until they were all spliced together.

Strangely direct and evocative for an album assembled entirely from a patchwork of disparate sources and music both obscure and over-familiar, Music For The Fire comes with an illustrated lyric sheet which reproduces the countless sampled voices as a single if utterly schizophrenic text — a bedtime story that is wildly inappropriate for actual children.  No reliable narrators, just the familiar and absurd, which on different spins of the disc might strike you as either maudlin, poignant or almost painfully hilarious. There is a way out of the maze, but it’s up to you to find it.

Update (2013) – now available for download at UbuWeb
http://www.ubu.com/sound/plu_fire.html

Update (2015) – this CD is now deleted

You can now download this on bandcamp should you wish to make a donation to our running costs: https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-the-fire

Since 1991 British artist Vicki Bennett (aka People Like Us) has been an influential figure in the field of audio visual collage, through her innovative sampling, appropriating and cutting up of found footage and archives. She has shown work at, amongst others, Tate Modern, the National Film Theatre, Purcell Room, Pompidou Center, Sonar in Barcelona, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the BBC and Channel 4, released albums of her work on labels such as Tigerbeat6, Soleilmoon and Touch, both solo and in collaboration with Matmos, Ergo Phizmiz, Christian Marclay and members of Negativland.  2010 will see the completion of a commission for the Edinburgh Art Festival as well as concert appearances at the AV Festival, MACBA, Liverpool Sound City, Copenhagen & Jerusalem.

Wobbly is the long-running collage project of Jon Leidecker (US), who improvises live with pre-recordings to coax the harmonies out of recorded sounds of individuals and animals from disparate cultures. Albums have been released on the labels Alku, Phthalo, Illegal Art, Tigerbeat6 and Vague Terrain.  Previous and ongoing projects include the bands Chopping Channel, Sagan, the Freddy McGuire Show and Amen Seat, as well as various collaborations with Negativland, Matmos, Thomas Dimuzio, Blevin Blectum, Lesser, Tim Perkis & Xopher Davidson, Otomo Yoshihide and MaryClare Bryztwa.  In 2009 he was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona to produce “Variations”, a podcast and lecture series overview of the history of musical collage & sampling.

People Like Us & Wobbly have been collaborating since her first visit to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998.  Early improvisations as a trio (with The Jet Black Hair People, aka Peter Conheim of Negativland) are documented by the online album What’s The Use, as well as archives of numerous radio and concert appearances recorded both in California and London, including on BBC Radio 3‘s “Mixing It”.  The present album for Illegal Art is composed from live recordings, carefully and obsessively edited over a great deal of time, and is their funniest, darkest and yet somehow strangely compassionate work, Music For The Fire tells a story which every listener will recognize in their own unique way.

With the release of People Like Us & Wobbly‘s Music For The Fire, Illegal Art continues to embrace a pay-what-you-want business model for high-quality downloads.  All label releases over the last four years have been issued (or reissued) under a the flexible payment system, and the entire Illegal Art back catalog should be subsumed by the end of 2010.  People Like Us & Wobbly also have a history of offering free downloads of entire projects, both new and old.  Vicki Bennett is such a firm endorser of the gift economy that she is the top downloaded audio artist on UbuWeb.  Her online-only album Abridged Too Far (2004) garnered over 25,000 downloads in its first month, and she adamantly defends such free offerings as beneficial to both the artist and consumer.

Press Quotes:

PEOPLE LIKE US
“… a freeform, unfolding imaginary landscape that is liberally peppered with slapstick.” – Phil England, The Wire

Bennett has continued to impress us with her technical ability and her wonderful sense of the ridiculous.” – Olli Siebelt, BBC

“… beautiful, compelling, funny, crazy stuff.  I listen to [People Like Us] while sitting at my drawing board.” – Matt Groening

“… it is that delirious adventure to tune in Disney cartoons while we administered a strong dose of amphetamines, LSD, and any other lysergic cocktail.” – J. Carlos Vellamueva, Rolling Stone (Mexico)

“… after prolonged exposure to the alchemical work of Vicki Bennett, we see and hear our own everyday world as one big joke which is already cut to pieces.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry.” – Drew Daniel, Matmos

“… warped-out easy easy-listening goddess and sample abuser extraordinaire.” – Ben Willmott, NME

Bennett has taken Eisenstein’s montage collisions and refashioned them as bumper cars at a seaside carnival.” – Jim Supanick, Film Society of Lincoln Center

WOBBLY
“If only one album were to be timecapsuled for the turn of this century, Wild Why would be a worthy candidate” – Pataphysics Lab

“The head is dazzling of all the cut up and collage which go by in highspeed” – Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly

“It would be pointless to try and characterize any of the sessions because the range of material they draw on is so diverse that the tracks are constantly changing direction” – Ben Borthwick, The Wire

“An expert at sculpting cohesive harmonies out of seemingly disjointed fragment.” – George Zahora, Splendid

“… a hewn diamond that, although beautiful, cuts through the most impermeable of solid bullshit.” – Tobias C. Van Veen, Stylus
Wild Why is a staggering deconstruction of commercial urban radio, breaking down mainstream hip-hop and R&B into a sludge of guttural  samples and low-end goo…  the rules holding our own world together bend wildly under even the slightest pressure.” – Philip Sherburne, Needle Drops

iPod download in our shop

It has occurred to us how nice films look when viewed on an iPod Touch or iPhone, especially of course ours! So we have made all the People Like Us films we can find (nearly 2.5 hours worth) into files that will fit onto that lovely little screen, and zipped them up, ready for you to purchase through Paypal at an extremely reasonable price.
Firstly make the purchase by Paypal, and then we will email you a weblink to two zipped folders, which you can download. Please note, the total size of these combined zips are 487MB, and once unzipped they contain multiple small mp4s, the right size for your iPod/iPhone. ONLY make the purchase if you have access to broadband! We cannot provide these files individually.

Once your iPod or iPhone is connected to your computer and iTunes is open, all you need to do is drag the films into the relevant iTunes folder, in the same way you would add any other media from within your computer.
Here is the list of films contained within:


Buy here!

SOLD OUT

Jean Baudrillard – Le Xerox et l’Infini

The Tapeworm # TTW#02 [Cassette]
Cassette only – limited edition of 250 copies
available from our shop
*SOLD OUT*

Track listing:
A: Part One – 17m12s
B: Part Two – 15m07s

Jean Baudrillard’s “Le Xerox et l’Infini” – originally published in Paris, 1987 – as read by Patricia and Ellen. Recorded on 12 July 2009 by Vicki Bennett in Hersham, England. Translation: Agitac, London, November 1988.

“Jean Baudrillard is perhaps the most important theorist of the ‘after modern’. Though he says himself he has ‘nothing to do with postmodernism’, many interpret him (along with Jean-François Lyotard) as among the most important prophets of a truly postmodern era. His works have attracted high praise and derision all over the world.”

Patricia and Ellen were born in Reims, north-eastern France, on July 29, 1929. They told interviewers that their grandparents were peasants and their parents were civil servants. They became the first of their family to attend university when they moved to the Sorbonne in Paris. There they studied German, which led to them to begin teaching the subject at a provincial lycée, where they remained from 1958 until their departure in 1966. While teaching Patricia and Ellen began to publish reviews of literature, and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht and Wilhelm Mühlmann.

Later on, with the development of the magnetic tape recorder, Patricia and Ellen used these new means in order to manipulate their performances and expand the possibilities of language sound transformations. Patricia and Ellen continue to actively perform their work, the contextual quality of which is enhanced by their idiosyncratic delivery.

Reviews
Jean Baudrillard Le Xerox et l’Infini – Hard Format (August 2009)
Jean Baudrillard Le Xerox et l’Infini – Aquarius Records (August 2009)

People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz “Withers in the Waking” 7″

Released October 2008
on Touch (TS08)

The 8th in the series of Touch Sevens, and the first to introduce melodic narrative. Both songs are results of the WFMU podcast series “Codpaste”, in which Vicki & Ergo publicly composed a series of collage compositions, deconstructing their respective practices, and a live soundtrack to Christian Marclay’s “ScreenPlay”. The series and soundtrack resulted in the online only album “Rhapsody in Glue”, from which these two songs are alternative versions.

“Withers in the Whist” takes one of Vicki & Ergo’s current staple obsessions: the melody line of Prokofiev’s ‘Troika’ from the Lieutenant Kije soundtrack (originally used in V & E’s work during a particularly snowy sequence of the Marclay film). This treatment dispenses with sampling entirely, instead using instruments to create variations on Prokofiev’s deceptively simple melody-line, tied together with impressionistic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics. It is playing with Prokofiev like a bad child who loves it’s toys.
“In The Waking” began with Ergo replaying with multitracked guitars the main melodic motifs Vicki collaged in the composition “Carmic Waltz”, with Vicki then ornamenting the guitars with splashes of colour like a real painter of sound, all blended into a pot of carnival steam with Ergo’s wordplay. It is a fantasy for the dream the fairground has when the world is sleeping, but only takes place five minutes before the carousel wakes up
Side A: In the Waking 5:55 [Locked groove]
Side B: Withers in the Whist 4:27

UK – price including P&P: $8.50
Buy in UK
EUROPE – price including P&P: $9.50
Buy in rest of Europe
ELSEWHERE – price including P&P: $10.50
Buy in rest of world

People Like Us “On The Rooftops Of London”

Mailorder Only 2007

People Like Us “On The Rooftops of London” was a session for the final edition of BBC Radio 3’s “Mixing It”, broadcast on 9 February 2007.
This is a one track CD single – just under 20 minutes long, hence at a lower price.
Thanks to Felix Carey, Philip Tagney, Mark Russell, Robert Sandall and Ergo Phizmiz.
You can download this as an mp3 elsewhere on this site.


CD SOLD OUT, MP3 ONLY

People Like Us “All Together Now”

Released October 2006
Mailorder Only – sold out

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.

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

or download it at UbuWeb

People Like Us “Story Without End” DVD

Released Autumn 2005
4 Short Films by People Like Us
Design by Joerg Hartmannsgruber & People Like Us

Buy on our bandcamp page

Sonic 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’.

Region Free

Contains:
We Edit Life
The Remote Controller
Resemblage
Story Without End


People Like Us “24 Hours Like Ours”

Released August 2004 (Mp3DVD001) – mailorder only

Yes, you can find a lot of this for free online, and we wholeheartedely encourage to go get it! But if you would like us to do the work for you, then here is around 24 hours of PLU, in mp3 form, on a data DVD.

This item is now deleted.  However, you can download the contents for free as a zip here.  (March 2015)

FEATURES MP3s OF:
Another Kind of Humor * 1992 * LP mini album
Lowest Common Dominator * 1993 * CD album
Guide To Broadcasting * 1994 * 3 inch
Beware The Whim Reaper * 1995 * CD album
Hate People Like You * 1997 * CD album
What’s The Use – Live * 1999 * online album w/ The Jet Black Hair People/Wobbly
Hate People Like Us * 1999 * CD double remix album KZSU – Live * 2000 * w/ The Jet Black Hair People/Wobbly
Lassie House/Jumble Massive * 2000 * CD reissue of 95/96 vinyl
WhatÕs Love * 2000 * track for Love Is This compilation CD
Thermos Explorer * 2000 * CD album
A Fistful of Knuckles * 2000 * CD album
Home Roam Play/Work All Day * 2000 * 12 inch w/ Matmos
Swinglargo/Going Out Of My Town * 2000 * 7 inch
Live on Other Worlds * 2001 * ABC Radio National w/ Irene Moon & The ECC
Like * 2002 * Remix of Kamahl for Why Are People So Unkind? 3 inch CD
Preserved Cowgirl * 2002 * Remix for Tipsy Remix Party CD
The National Humm * 2002 * Remix of The Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland
PLU & Friends Volume 1 * 2002 * mailorder CD album w/ V/A
There Goes Nothing * 2002 * mailorder CD album w/ Wobbly
Recyclopaedia Britannica * 2002 * CD album
Stifled Love * 2002 * LP album
Over The Edge – Live * 2002 * w/ Don Joyce and Wobbly
Tremble Peady * 2003 * Remix of Wobbly
PLU Messer Chups Remix * 2003 * for Messer Chups Crazy Price CD
John Peel Session * 2003 * BBC Radio 1
Nothing Special * 2003 * CD album w/ Kenny G
Wide Open Spaces * 2003 * w/ Matmos and Wobbly
Gongexeva * 2003 * track for Ergo Phizmiz CD
Session for Remixology on WFMU * 2003 * WFMU
When I Was Young/Downtown Once More * 2003 * 7 inch
Live on Mixing It * 2004 * BBC Radio 3
Abridged Too Far * 2004 * online album

Recyclopaedia Britannica – Selected Works 1992-2002

Released April 2002 – Mess Media (thru Soleilmoon) MESS1

SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE

“The 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 “topical” audio-jokes at the expense of one’s raw material to a smug effect. If the lounge creeps uncritically snack on their sonic ingredients and coast on being “groovy”, 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.” – Drew Daniel