Very nice review of COPIA In Igloo Magazine. Many thanks!
Podcast about our new album COPIA
New People Like Us album – Copia
“COPIA” by People Like Us (Cutting Hedge SNIP003)
CD & Digital Download
https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/copia
People Like Us, the project of artist Vicki Bennett, announces the release of “COPIA” on June 7, 2024. This album marks the first new musical material since “The Mirror” in 2018, delving into the profound realms of existential collage and sampling, celebrating these forms as expressions of timeless connectivity.
The title “COPIA,” meaning ‘abundance’ and ‘copy,’ reflects the essence of collage and sampling — art crafted not in isolation, but as a connective thread through time and space, linking ideas across generations in a seamless tapestry. By reconfiguring preexisting sounds and images, Bennett highlights the non-dual nature of creation — where distinctions between past, present, and future possibilities blur, revealing a shared foundation beneath. The album marks a return to not just solo works but collaborations with notable artists.
Drawing from the new People Like Us live AV performance, “The Library of Babel,” sampling and edited sound collage, electronic music, combined with Ergo Phizmiz’s lyrics and melodies, “COPIA” weaves and recombines a timeless blend of diverse elements that transcends traditional musical boundaries. This creative process unfolded through the exchange of multitracks across both water and ether. Collaborating with the voices, instruments and editing timelines of Matmos, Hearty White, Gwilly Edmondez, Lottie Bowater, Buttress O’Kneel, Douglas Benford, Irene Moon, Jon Leidecker, and Matt Warwick, the work evolved exquisite corpse-style.
“COPIA” will be available on Bandcamp as both a physical CD and digital download. Accompanying the release, live performances of “The Library of Babel” will continue both in the UK and abroad in the coming months, including potential live collaborations with Ergo Phizmiz and Gwilly Edmondez.
“Bennett has proven herself an alchemist of popular music, able to push her source material into fresh and engaging places. Where some artists hack existing instruments and technologies to create their new sounds, Bennett has circuit-bent the songs themselves.” – Spenser Tomson, The Wire Magazine
“Listening to “Copia” is like hearing music for the first time, as if the concept was completely new. You keep creating art that feels like that first shock-of-the-new you get when you step off a plane after you’ve landed in a new country. Something that wasn’t known, or knowable, somehow appears.” – Charles Powne, Soleilmoon
About People Like Us
Since 1991, People Like Us has been at the forefront of audio-visual collage, opening up endless opportunities to experience results that are more than the sum of the parts. 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. Vicki Bennett’s project serves as a modern-day continuation of the collage tradition, highlighting the interconnectedness of all artistic creation.
For further information, promotional materials, or to arrange an interview, please contact us.
New Merchandise Website! New Merchandise!
People Like Us now have an additional official website, for handling t-shirts, tote bags, greeting cards, postcards, prints and mugs. We’re continuing to use the same supplier but this time directly, so this change allows us to offer the same high-quality organic cotton t-shirts but at significantly lower prices.
Additionally, we have a brand-new t-shirt and tote bag design featuring a sneak peek of artwork from our upcoming CD, called “Copia”, set to release in May 2024.
Explore this and more at https://people-like-us.teemill.com/.
CONSEQUENCES (ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER) performance by PEOPLE LIKE US
Introducing the new People Like Us audiovisual performance:
“Consequences”, has two definitions; it is the result of some previous action, and a game (called Exquisite Corpse by the Surrealists) in which a larger picture/narrative is created by assembling subject matter “blindly” in relation to a small amount of information made visible before it as a continuation point. As a result, content surprisingly and sometimes magically changes over a short period of time or space, with every part still connected to that which goes before or after it.
This new audiovisual performance by People Like Us places similar but emerging subject matter side by side to construct the narrative, where a story emerges as a sum of the parts that came before it yet digresses on a tangent. All actions have consequences, and here we see them played out, to wondrous and catastrophic effect!
“The subject of authenticity, the “original” in relation to the “copy” (coming from the word “copia”, meaning multitude and abundance) interest me as an artist working in the field of collage and appropriation. “Original” has limited connection with “quality” or “engaging”, and (at least in the past 300 years) nothing created as an object or product can be traced 100% to an origin – everything is relative, literally – it has a mother and father. Much like speed, dimensions, size, the terms are reliant upon the conditions of the person experiencing it, where they are and when, there is NO absolute. This is reflected when very similar creative works and inventions occur at the same period by people who have no knowledge of each other’s works existence. In Consequences we reflect that no man is an island, but the island has lots of mirror mazes… in fact some mirrors can be walked through.” — Vicki Bennett
People Like Us “Wonderful” [2012]
Trailer and Excerpt:
Performances:
Transmediale, Berlin – 31 January 2013
La Casa Encendida, Madrid – 15 March 2013
XOYO, London – 19 March 2013
Tectonics, Reykjavik – 20 April 2013
Colchester Arts Centre – 4 May 2013
Nuits Sonores, Lyon – 8 May 2013
Only Connect Festival, Oslo – 8 June 2013
Lab Festival, Augsburg – 25 & 26 October 2013
Newcastle Star & Shadow – 31 October 2013 (part of NOTATIONS Tour)
Sound of Stockholm Festival – 8 November 2013
Manchester Kraak – 14 November 2013 (part of NOTATIONS Tour)
Leeds Hyde Park Picture House as part of Leeds International Film Festival – 16 November 2013 (part of NOTATIONS Tour)
London Cafe Oto – 29 November 2013 (part of NOTATIONS Tour)
Bristol Arnolfini – 30 November 2013 (part of NOTATIONS Tour)
L’Embobineuse, Marseille, France – 15 March 2014
Hamburg Hörbar – 9 May 2014
Trondheim Electronic Arts Centre Here To Go Symposium – 31 May 2014
Now retired but available as film screenings:
Recombinant Festival 2017, Grey Area San Francisco – October 2017
Other Cinema, San Francisco – 7 April 2018
Press images:
