People Like Us Residency at Cafe OTO

PEOPLE LIKE US Cafe OTO ARTIST RESIDENCY 
27 / 28 / 29 OCTOBER 2023

Tickets: https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/people-like-us-three-day-residency/
Buy PASS for all three events £28 ADVANCE £15 MEMBERS
or for individual events £16 £14 ADVANCE £8 MEMBERS

PEOPLE LIKE US | NEGATIVLAND | ERGO PHIZMIZ | GWILLY EDMONDEZ 
POREST | IRENE MOON | WOBBLY | HEARTY WHITE

Cafe OTO is proud to announce a new artist residency, featuring multimedia artist Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us. Vicki has collaborated with a wide range of artists and musicians; some are joining us for this 3-Day residency, alongside some screenings and discussions. The residency includes a preview of the new People Like Us audiovisual performance Is This The Real Life?

People Like Us

DAY 1 | 8PM
HEARTY WHITE (compère) | POREST | IRENE MOON | NEGATIVLAND
PEOPLE LIKE US & ERGO PHIZMIZ & GWILLY EDMONDEZ (trio)
DAY 1 PASS £16 £14 ADVANCE £8 MEMBERS

HEARTY WHITE compère 
Our residency compère is Hearty White, a performer based in Lexington, Kentucky. His one-hour weekly radio show “Miracle Nutrition with Hearty White” has aired on WFMU from 2012 until the present. https://wfmu.org/playlists/ha

Hearty White

POREST
Porest is the music and performance outlet of post-American artist and producer Mark Gergis. For decades, Porest has issued a trail of confounding agitprop sound art, post-globalized hate-pop, diabolical radio dramas, big songs and small songs. Porest’s blatant embezzlement of human syntax and cultural misunderstanding broadcasts vital mixed messages across all fields, forging carefully rearranged realities that both avoid and indulge the inherent trappings of radical art and politics. Live performances integrate Porest’s music, performance and sound into a grand total sum that can’t be unseen. Ongoing collaborations have included: Negativland (USA) Alan Bishop / Sun City Girls (USA), Aavikko (Finland), Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us (UK), among others. Porest has performed and toured worldwide, with albums released on Nashazphone (Cairo), Discrepant (UK), and in the US on the Seeland, Abduction and Resipiscent labels. 
In the 1990s and 2000s, Mark was co-founder of the long-running experimental California music and performance collective Mono Pause, as well as its offshoot Neung Phak. In his other life, Mark is an archivist and producer for global music releases on the Sublime Frequencies and Sham Palace labels, including compilations and documentary works such as I Remember Syria, Cambodian Cassette Archives, Saigon Rock & Soul, Choubi Choubi (Iraq), Dabke: Sounds from the Syrian Houran and his extensive work with artists Omar Souleyman (Syria) and Erikin Koray (Turkey). https://porest.bandcamp.com/

Mark Gergis (Porest)

IRENE MOON
Since 1997, Scientifically Speaking with Irene Moon has been presenting The Lectography: musical lectures about insects and other arthropods in an attempt to elevate entomology as a rock genre. Performing at basement house shows and more famous music venues like the Knitting Factory and the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Irene Moon has toured the US, Europe, and Australia. She created over 30 musical volumes during her career and performed live radio broadcasts dealing with entomological topics on WFMU in New York and other radio stations. Irene Moon (a.k.a Katja C. Seltmann, Ph.D.) is the Director of the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She brings the aesthetics from the entomology laboratory in front of alternative audiences in the form of absurd, factual presentations about insects. 
Her performance at Cafe Oto PLU Residency is a lounge-inspired lecture on bee biodiversity and evolution titled “Will You Bee Mind” that incorporates psychedelic imagery, pop-styled torch songs, and comedy. https://www.begoniasociety.org

Irene Moon

PEOPLE LIKE US & ERGO PHIZMIZ & GWILLY EDMONDEZ 
First commissioned for The Wire 40 Anniversary and now seen for the first time in expanded form, this new trio showcases a whole new AV performance dedicated to collage, technology and the cut-up. 
“The interplay between People Like Us, Ergo Phizmiz and Gwilly Edmondez creates a harmonious and dynamic show that captivates and enthrals. The combination of music, poetry, and performance art creates a magical and unforgettable experience for the audience.” – Tough Sell Zine

Gwilly Edmondez, People Like Us, Ergo Phizmiz

NEGATIVLAND
What’s a recording? Are they safe? Are the things being played back true, or are they simply becoming familiar? You can wait for your own brain to come up with the answers, or you can go hear music in a room full of people. Don’t worry — you won’t even realize how much of it you’re going to remember.
We are pleased as pugs to be participating in the People Like Us residency — whatever we end up doing is sure to only happen there, because you can never hear the same recording twice. https://negativland.com/

Negativland

DAY 2 | 8PM
HEARTY WHITE (compère) | WOBBLY solo | ERGO PHIZMIZ solo
PEOPLE LIKE US solo | GWILLY EDMONDEZ solo
DAY 2 PASS £16 £14 ADVANCE £8 MEMBERS

HEARTY WHITE compère
Our residency compère is Hearty White, a performer based in Lexington, Kentucky. His one-hour weekly radio show “Miracle Nutrition with Hearty White” has aired on WFMU from 2012 until the present. https://wfmu.org/playlists/ha

WOBBLY
Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) is a human in the loop, improvising with people and machines that listen. His work with sampling and feedback blurs any easy distinction between his solo and collaborative work, including touring and recording with Negativland, the Thurston Moore Group, People Like Us, Jennifer Walshe, Zeena Parkins, Zoh Amba, Dieter Moebius & Tim Story, Matmos, Thomas Dimuzio, Fred Frith and Huun-Huur-Tu (among others). Lectures on the various secret histories of electronic music have been presented at Mills, Stanford, Oxford, Peabody, UC Berkeley, and MACBA.
As well as playing as part of Negativland, Jon will perform a solo set for this residency. https://www.detritus.net/wobbly/news.html

Jon Leidecker (Wobbly)

ERGO PHIZMIZ
Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, collagist, stage director and radio playwright. Recent projects have included animated stage designs for “The Rake’s Progress” at the Royal Academy of Music and Maggio Musicale Firenze, and the huge, smash hit community pantomime “The Quantum Horse” in collaboration with Cube Microplex, Bristol. Their multiple award winning work for radio includes programmes for Bayerischer Rundfunk, Deutschlandradiokultur, BBC Radio 3, BBC 6Music, WFMU, West Deutscher Rundfunk, VPRO and Resonance FM. Recent music releases have mainly comprised the deluxe holiday leisure trilogy on Strategic Tape Reserve “Elmyr”, “Plaza Centraal” and “Owl and Monkey Haven”. Ergo is currently developing a new operatic work “Adapting Don Quixote” as a PhD at the University of Bristol. 
Ergo will perform a rare solo set for this residency. http://ergophizmizmusic.bandcamp.com

Ergo Phizmiz

PEOPLE LIKE US
Residency host Vicki Bennett will preview her brand new audiovisual performance “Is This The Real Life?” This work explores themes of reality and perception and the relationship between image and sound. https://peoplelikeus.org

GWILLY EDMONDEZ
Gwilly Edmondez emerged in the 1980s from Bridgend, South Wales, where he was a founder member of Radioactive Sparrow, once dubbed ‘the most legendary band you’ve probably never heard of.’ Gwilly practices a form of composition that disavows fixity and rehearsal, preferring an approach that dissolves the line between ‘life’ and ‘performance’ in ways that compromise neither. Having coined the term Wild Pop to describe his aesthetic as both a solo artist and as Gustav Thomas in YEAH YOU (est. 2013), his embracing the age of evaporation is manifest in a relentless autopathology oriented towards devotional sublimation.
Gwilly closes Day 2 of the residency with a special dictaphone karaoke set, a real crowd pleaser. https://gwillyedmondez.bandcamp.com/

Gwilly Edmondez

DAY 3 | 2-5PM
PEOPLE LIKE US & HEARTY WHITE CONVERSATION, VARIATIONS LECTURE & CHART SWEEP PERFORMANCE
DAY 3 PASS £10 £8 ADVANCE £5 MEMBERS

VICKI BENNETT and HEARTY WHITE IN CONVERSATION
A discussion between the People Like Us and Hearty White, followed by a Q&A.
https://peoplelikeus.org | https://wfmu.org/playlists/HA

JON LEIDECKER “VARIATIONS: A HISTORY OF SAMPLING MUSIC”
Morton Feldman’s remark that “The degree to which a music’s notation is responsible for much of the composition itself is one of history’s best-kept secrets” referred to the medium of sheet music. But the comment is just as true now that the site of the musical composition has migrated from written notation to the captured recording. The creative process of modern music production is revealed to the listening audience in the form of collage and sampling music precisely through its use of familiar materials;  through a demonstration of how known compositions and sounds can be transformed, the tools used by all sound engineers to construct modern popular music are made transparent.
https://rwm.macba.cat/en/buscador/radio/serie/variations-9458

GWILLY EDMONDEZ SINGS “CHART SWEEP”
CHART SWEEP (AKA TIME SWEEP) is a 2-part mix created by Hugo Keesing using up to 5 seconds of each and every #1 since the mid-fifties, in order, up until 1981 in Part 1 and into the early nineties in Part 2. find more info at ubu.com/sound/keesing.html
Gwilly Edmondez started watching Top of the Pops when he was 3. From then on he was obsessed with pop music. he has developed an approach to music making that collides a pop sensibility (with all its showbiz delusional rhetoric) with the materials and mentalness of experimental music.
ubu.com/sound/edmondez.html | https://peoplelikeus-vickibennett.bandcamp.com/album/gwilly-edmondez-sings-chart-sweep

Radio on the Radio – People Like Us & Negativland

OVER THE EDGE : “WWW Radio” broadcasting on KPFA
People Like Us & Negativland on KWCW
(with a prelude in the radio show featuring special guest Blevin Blectum)
17 March 2022 | KPFA.ORG | MIDNIGHT-3AM (PT)

Show archived here

A week long residency at Whitman College’s Sheehan Gallery brought Vicki and Negativland & Sue-C to Walla Walla, Washington. It all ended with college radio: a two and half hour long chartsweeping riot broadcasted live from the studios of KWCW containing Vicki, Mark, Wobbly and eventually, one receptacle guest calling in to sing. 98% of that broadcast you’ll hear on Over The Edge tonight, largely as it happened.

PLU / MATMOS / WOBBLY Wide Open Spaces now on VINYL

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 “Wide Open Spaces”, 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

Over The Edge on DO or DIY on WFMU

Over The Edge
DO or DIY with People Like Us – Monday, 19 June 2017 – 6pm
https://wfmu.org/playlists/pl
From 1981 to 2015, Negativland‘s Don Joyce hosted Over The Edge, the longest running block of freeform live mix collage radio in broadcast history — a program which continues today, having been inherited by long time show participant and collaborator Jon Leidecker. In this very Wobbly interview, Vicki and Jon discuss the history of collage radio, and the slow evolution of the Edge, as well as its many possible futures, both True and False.
http://www.detritus.net/wobbly/ | https://archive.org/details/ote

Music For The Fire by People Like Us & Wobbly

Music For The Fire [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. Originally released on CD on Illegal Art.  Thanks to UbuWeb for hosting this.

Lyric Sheet

  1. Fiction
  2. Naked Little Girl
  3. Sheep Laid Out To Dry
  4. Partner
  5. Okay
  6. Giant Love Ball Song
  7. Goodbye
  8. Woman
  9. Female Convict
  10. Pick Up
  11. Everyone Alone
  12. Hello
  13. A New Baby
  14. Fertile
  15. Bad News
  16. Understanding You
  17. Pain

UbuWeb new addition: Welcome Abroad

Another People Like Us album now available for free download over at UbuWeb:
http://www.ubu.com/sound/plu_welcome.html

Welcome Abroad {2011)

  1. Sing
  2. Happy Lost Songs
  3. Stuck in the USSR
  4. The Look
  5. Help Me To Help Myself
  6. What Will I Do
  7. Lost In The Dark
  8. Push The Clouds Away
  9. The Sound Of The End Of Music
  10. Wonderful Wonderful
  11. Driving Flying Rising Falling
  12. Ever
  13. Hush
  14. Wandering
  15. The Seven Hills of Rome (with Ergo Phizmiz)
  16. You’ve Got To Know When
  17. The Atlantic Conveyor

Release date: 24 May 2011
Illegal Art IA124 http://www.illegalart.net

Press release

“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.

Thanks to Ergo Phizmiz, Jason Willett, M.C.Schmidt (Matmos), Virginia Pipe and Wobbly for contributing instruments, audio parts and multitracking to this album.

Lyrics on The Seven Hills of Rome by Ergo Phizmiz.

Some of the tracks listed above also have a moving image representation in People Like Us in UbuWeb Film

RELATED RESOURCES:

Ergo Phizmiz in UbuWeb Sound
Jon Leidecker (Wobbly) in UbuWeb Sound
People Like Us in UbuWeb Film

Don Joyce, People Like Us, Wobbly, Wetgate Live at Cell Space, San Francisco, 1998

Yes, the date there is correct. Just found this video, courtesy of Doug Wellman of Puzzling EvidenceSuperstars of sample People Like Us, Wobbly, and C. Elliot Friday (Don Joyce) of Negativland join forces with projectionists Wetgate to layer lightly at the Cell Space one fine spring night to discern “what’s music?”…

Over The Wobbly Wetgate People Like on April 9 1998 from Puzzling Evidence on Vimeo.

A Tribute to Don Joyce

Don't Say Hello
Don’t Say Hello

Don Joyce (Negativland, Over The Edge) has merged with the radio waves.  Don was a close friend and amazing artist.  His influence on the work of People Like Us is beyond measure.  Here is a wonderful piece accurately conveying many of my own experiences, written by Jon Leidecker, who I also first met through Don. 

Don Joyce lived in a second story flat off Telegraph Avenue in what is now the thoroughly gentrified Temescal district in Oakland, but when I visited the Negativland home studio for the first time in July of 1987, after nightfall you had to watch yourself on the way from your car to the front door. I was there to drop off source materials and discuss the theme for the coming week’s episode of Over The Edge, which, after two years of avid fandom, I had finally been invited to play. Don still had his programming day job at that point, and I discovered him in his room tinkering with the GUI for a primitive typing tutor program on his Mac SE with his left hand, while his right hand hovered near the pause button on a cassette deck recording KGO talk radio. Occasionally, while talking to me and coding with one hand, he’d unpause or repause the recording with the other, seemingly randomly. But I soon realized he was precisely waiting for silences between the host and his callers, and making sure host and callers still alternated in sequence. The resulting tape would still sound as if it were a conversation; it just wouldn’t be even remotely close to the one that had actually happened.

This approach to multi-tasking wouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone who’s heard Over The Edge, which I’d randomly channel surfed into at 12:30 in the morning two years before; at first I’d assumed I’d hit one of those magic nodes on the analog dial where two stations were coming in clearly at the same time, and paused to enjoy the accident. The slow rush of recognition came on over the next twenty seconds as I realized it was actually five to ten things at once: talk radio recordings and advertisements cut in with each other and twisted into dialogues, all while loosely played guitars and keyboards mingled with fragments of pop and soundtrack albums. And only when the sound of a disconnecting line terminated the guitar riff did I make that final connection: a number of the lower fidelity instruments and tapes were being contributed by live phone callers. I stayed up until the show ended at three, that night and many nights to come.

Continue reading “A Tribute to Don Joyce”