The The – Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake

Update: THE THE is No.1 in the UK vinyl singles chart! So that means we just made a video with Tim Pope for a No.1 single 🙂

We’ve just completed editing the new single from the upcoming THE THE album, Ensoulment—the third single from this album, set to release in September. All three singles have been edited by us, with each one directed by Tim Pope. It’s been great fun – hope you get to catch them on tour.

The The Linoleum Smooth video

We just worked on the video for the second The The single in the last month, “Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot”.

The The

The new music video for ‘Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot’ was made in conjunction with long-time collaborators: directed by Tim Pope with editing and VFX by Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) and Peter Knight, with Anya Krasnikova as Director of Photography.

The lyrics for this song – which touch upon the nascent bio-security state – were written from Matt Johnson’s hospital bed, under the influence of morphine whilst recovering from a life-saving operation. As fate would have it, Johnson’s weeks in hospital had nothing to do with Covid, but occurred at precisely the time Covid reached crisis proportions, making for an even more surreal ordeal. The discordant interplay between horns and fiddle is redolent of Johnson’s hallucinogenic, surreal experience, which he tried to emulate by asking the musicians to improvise over the track, without hearing the other’s contribution, as he manipulated the sounds in real time.

‘Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Foot’ is unique in that it does not feature any of the core band members apart from Johnson on vocals, guitar and bass, plus guest musicians Sonya Cullingford on fiddle, Terry Edwards on horns, Gillian Glover providing backing vocals, and hand claps from percussionist Danny Cummings. Co-produced by Matt Johnson and Warne Livesey. Ensoulment will be released on 6th Sept (CinĂ©ola / earMUSIC) and can be pre-ordered here: https://thethe.lnk.to/EnsoulmentPR Ensouled world tour dates can be found here: https://www.thethe.com/tour-dates/

Video for new The The single!

Great to see the long-awaited announcement of a new THE THE album. We made the video for the new THE THE single ‘Cognitive Dissident’ with Tim Pope 🙂

The new video for ‘Cognitive Dissident’ was made in conjunction with long-time collaborators: directed by Tim Pope with editing, VFX and projections by Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) and Peter Knight.

‘Cognitive Dissident’ (written by Matt Johnson and Barrie Cadogan) is the first single from Ensoulment, the first studio album from THE THE in a quarter century.

THE THE and Tim Pope have a long, shared history working on a variety of videos and projects, including The Comeback Special film of the concert at Royal Albert Hall in 2018, the legendary Infected The Movie in 1987 – the first ever long-form video album release – the Versus The World film of the concert at Royal Albert Hall in 1990, and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn in 1993, as well as many music videos over the years including ‘Pillar Box Red’, ‘The Beat(en) Generation’, ‘Kingdom of Rain’, ‘Gravitate To Me’ etc.

Vicki Bennett (People Like Us), acclaimed video collage artist, and Peter Knight (photographer) have also long been associated with THE THE having created the videos for ‘We Can’t Stop What’s Coming’ and the ‘Stolen Moments’ GlobalEyes remix by DJ Food as well as creating the kaleidoscopic, cinematic backdrop for The Comeback Special world tour.

“It’s always a pleasure to work with my dear friends, director Tim Pope, video collage artist Vicki Bennett, and photographer Peter Knight. Our times working together are not only very creative, but also full of joyful mischief.” – Matt Johnson

Ensoulment will be released on 6th Sept (CinĂ©ola / earMUSIC) and can be pre-ordered here – https://thethe.lnk.to/EnsoulmentPR

Ensouled world tour dates can be found here – https://www.thethe.com/tour-dates/

Video of our Cafe OTO residency!

We’ve made an edit of the video that we shot of our Cafe OTO residency, here it is.

edit by Vicki

Thanks to those of you who managed to attend the event, and all of you who’ve helped fund my IndieGoGo campaign this year, along with our Patreons who help us on a day-to-day basis to pay for our rather steep usage of computer-related electricity power, and CafĂ© OTO for being totally brilliant. And of course, my friends, the artists, my inspiration!

Now we will return to making more of our solo performance The Library of Babel (which you see an excerpt of in the above video), continuing to make a new album.

PLU video on WFMU

Join People Like Us for an hour of audiovisual entertainment, edited specially for Ken Freedman’s radio show on WFMU. You can listen to this at home or in the… you can listen to it, er, at home… and you can watch it too!

Come and watch People Like Us and friends on Ken’s playlist page and on the WFMU front page just before 11am NY time on Wednesday 8 April 2020. Ideally we recommend listening to his whole show of course from 9am!

Join People Like Us on Ken’s live playlist: http://wfmu.org/playlists/KF

Gone, Gone Beyond New Trailer Summer 2018

As you may have seen in other posts, we are making Gone, Gone Beyond, a 360 surround sound and seamless projection piece for Recombinant Media Labs Cinechamber.  It has been screened once at Recombinant Festival in 2017, this was the 40 minute version.  We are now expanding the work to be an hour long and it will be available for screening (contained in Cinechamber, which is available for hire) in 2019.

Also, here are some pictures which document our screening at Recombinant Festival.

New THE THE single video We Can’t Stop What’s Coming by People Like Us

People Like Us have edited the video for the new THE THE single “We Can’t Stop What’s Coming”

7″ limited edition single from THE THE – featuring Matt Johnson, Zeke Manyika, Johnny Marr, James Eller, Meja Kullersten, Chris Whitten and Iain Berryman.

Trailer edited by Vicki Bennett / People Like Us from footage taken from the documentary The Inertia Variations directed by Johanna St Michaels.

Released through Cineola.

Music available to purchase through iTunes: http://smarturl.it/TheThe-WCSWCSingleiT

Documentation Video: Optimized! Expanded Radio & Artist Residency at WFMU

From 6-10 June 2016 Vicki Bennett and John Kilduff were Artists in Residence at freeform radio station WFMU in Jersey City, NJ, USA. This residency consisted of “Optimized!” – a week-long online a/v radio station 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 commissions selected and programmed by Vicki Bennett, where people were invited to respond to the word “optimized”, John Kilduff’s live “Let’s Paint TV” daily video show which combines, painting, cooking and exercise, and an evening at the station with an in-house studio audience.

This documents just some of what went on. The rest is archived at wfmu.org/playlists/up

Thanks to:
Andrew Sharpley, Bodega Pop Live with Gary Sullivan, Brian J Davis, Brijet Murray, Bryce, Busy Doing Nothing with Charlie, Buttress O’Kneel, Carlo PatrĂŁo, Carol McCrossen, Dan, Dan Deacon, Daniel Menche, Dina Kelberman, DO or DIY with People Like Us, Drew Daniel, DW Robertson, Gwilly Edmondez, Hank Lewis, Heather Phillipson, Irene Moon, Jason Willett & MC Schmidt, Jeff Moore, Jem Finer, Jim Price, John, John Dalton, John Kilduff, Ken Freedman, Kimzilla, Leech, Liz Berg, Matt Warwick, Melissa, Miracle Nutrition with Hearty White, Nick the Bard, Osymyso, Pat Byrne’s Desk, Peter Knight, Porest, Pseu Braun, Roy, Ruth Hayduk, Scott Williams, Steinski, The Dusty Show with Clay Pigeon, Tim Maloney, Tom, Vicki Bennett, Will, Wreck This Mess with Bart Plantenga, WFMU, Monty Hall and The National Endowment For The Arts

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OPTIMIZED! Expanded Radio Stream on WFMU!

OPTIMIZED! Expanded Radio Stream on WFMU 6-10 June 2016, Noon-3pm (EST)
Playlists & archives: http://wfmu.org/playlists/UP
Documentation: https://peoplelikeus.org/2016/optimized-wfmu/

From 6-10 June 2016 Vicki Bennett and John Kilduff were Artists in Residence at freeform radio station WFMU in Jersey City, NJ, USA.

NEW! Documentation Video:

This residency consisted of “Optimized!” – a week-long online a/v radio station 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 commissions selected and programmed by Vicki Bennett, where people were invited to respond to the word “optimized”, John Kilduff’s live “Let’s Paint TV” daily video show which combines, painting, cooking and exercise, and an evening at the station with an in-house studio audience.

John Kilduff and Vicki Bennett Artist Residency – Expanded Radio at WFMU

optimized-schedule
Noon-2pm: 10 hours of new/exclusive recordings, radio & video by 26 participants. Programmed by Vicki Bennett / People Like Us
2pm-3pm: Daily video shows live from WFMU’s Monty Hall by John Kilduff / Let’s Paint TV – Mr Let’s Paint will take your calls! skype: letspaintwfmu
3pm-5pm: repeat of noon-2pm schedule
9 June 2016: A live expanded radio event at Monty Hall with Let’s Paint TV & People Like Us / DIFM (Do It For Me) with Pseu Braun

Pseu Braun DIFM (Do It For Me) at Monty Hall

Continue reading “OPTIMIZED! Expanded Radio Stream on WFMU!”