*** NEW MUSIC - Bright Light Bright Light have announced the date for his debut album 'Make Me Believe In Hope', which will be on June 4. 'Waiting For The...

Ho ho ho, assholes! With the Christmas holiday coming up this weekend and we're already two days deep up on the Hanukkah tip, it's very much time to drop the annual The Decibel Tolls Holiday Mixer . You know the deal - a carefully curated collection of skewed, brain-burning, monolithic Christmas gems that totally sleigh. Get it?! Sleigh? Slay? It's a homophone, you guys! Ugh... never mind. Tough crowd. Anyway, these yule-time canticles exalted on high can crush shopping malls and magically spike egg nog, true story. For this year's mixer, you'll recognize you'll recognize some jams from previous year's mixers, [...]

The most wonderful time of the year, right guys? 'Twas the end of December, and all through the blogosphere, not a creature was stirring, except for the sounds of music writers springin' chub, strokin' egos, and Bon Iverin' via the storied tradition of the "best of" list. Well, The Decibel Tolls participates in that jive as well, save for the latter. Be it as it may. So yeah, man... 2011... shit. 2011 was a turbulent and gnarly year, and as such, we've been treated to some truly stellar music. Funny how that works - civic and economic tension [...]
There has been a raging debate as to whether or not artists who make "collage music"—and I use "artists" purposefully because there isn't that much musicianship in it—should be fined and tried and tarred and feathered for what they do. Is it copyright infringement? Is it stealing? Do the musicians they steal from really care that much? This humble writer doesn't care, nor do I think they should be bothered, unless the collages they make aren't exciting. For my money, the most successful artists I've heard that combine found and known tracks into something sonically pleasing are The [...]

We listen to a LOT of music everyday... like hours and hours of it. Pretty much at any given time we are checking out music and not surprisingly there is a lot of retread and just plain old not good out there. That is why UK's People Like Us knocked us back a bit. We hadn't heard anything like it before. She (Vicki Bennet) make's something called sound collage.. I spose you can tie it up in the "mash up" category, but it just isn't that. Not really. If you have ever wanted to hear Julie Andrews do a duet with Jim [...]

It's time to listen to a bunch of the tracks I have not posted recently. Here is the next NOT POSTED mix. These are just a few of the songs that would get there own individual posts on here on GIMME TINNITUS, if I only had the time. You can stream all the songs in this mix using the Yahoo media player at the bottom of the page OR if you are browsing with Chrome you can play (and scrobble ) the whole page using the ex.fm extension OR [...]

For two decades, Vicki Bennett recorded albums and toured the world as People Like Us , a comprehensive audio-visual art project that makes prodigious use of archival films, library music, and vintage Billboard hits, and is also responsible for the phrases "plagiarhymthic" and "irritainment." You may know People Like Us from WFMU's amazing Do or DIY show. If you're not yet familiar with People Like Us, think of Bennett as a wholly psychedelic and disjointed Girl Talk or a tuneful and playful Negativland. But don't confuse her with some sort of wanky mashup treachery or [...]

Sabbath Assembly - Restored To One Like most kids, I learned some of life's most important lessons by watching movies that weren't exactly "age-appropriate." Thanks to power of Showtime, I learned about demonic possession ( The Exorcist ), the horrors of war ( The Big Red One ) and the carnal pleasures of the swinging London disco scene ( The Bitch ) before I was ten. But of all the cinematic masterworks I subjected myself to in pre-pubescence, none was more horrifying than Godspell [...]
While Matt Groening is much more recognizable as the creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, the man has developed an impeccable taste in music. As the curator for ATP 2003 at Long Beach, Groening chose acts ranging from !!!, Sonic Youth, and The Shins to Mission of Burma and Bangs. The outcome so epic that Groening has been tapped to curate the first weekend of ATP 2010 . Apparently, while Groening is creating some of the most prolific comedy/satire today, he is listening to the collaged musical oddities of People Like [...]
"Ghosts Before Breakfast" Hans Richter (1928) / People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz (2007) from Vicki WFMU on Vimeo . Hans Richter made the now public domain film "Ghosts Before Breakfast" in 1928. Hans Richter's original soundtrack was unfortunately destroyed. With the greatest respect intended for the original film, People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz composed a new soundtrack for this film in 2007.

Following the success of the critically acclaimed "Perpetuum Mobile" CD of 2007, renowned UK collagists / composers People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz reunite for "Rhapsody in Glue", a cycle of bricolage-ballet-music, skewed-waltzes, and skewiff-pop. There is a story behind every album, and with "Rhapsody in Glue" we find a unique approach to constructing a record. Both long-term contributors to New York radio station WFMU, People Like Us & Ergo Phizmiz decided to publicly tear apart their respective practices and create an album "in the open", [...]

I don't toss around the word "brilliant" too often. I recently rediscovered visual and sound collage demon People Like Us , and it's absolutely brilliant. I find old film reels, archaic educational videos, public domain images, technology that was supposed to change our lives but didn't, and general oddities of American industry terrifically intriguing. People Like Us , the A/V project of Viki Bennett, combines all these images with a Raymond Scott -esque audio pastiche. People Like Us do tour and perform installations occasionally, and I had the pleasure of seeing them back in, [...]
There's only two more days left to get in on the Inaugural Poem Remix. I'll be taking submissions until Tuesday evening. You can find out how to get in on the fun here . I'll be playing them all on my show, this coming Weds from Noon-3 pm EST. Here's the submissions thus far: People Like Us "An Induction Is A Draft Is A Gust Of Air" People Like Us "Adjournment-Poem" [...]
WFMU DJ and cut-and-paste multimedia artist People Like Us checks in with three recent releases she'll be sharing via the Free Music Archive : 1.) "On The Rooftops Of London" CD single Originally Mailorder Only 2007 People Like Us - "On the Rooftops of London" (mp3) was a session for the final edition of BBC Radio 3's "Mixing It", broadcast on 9 February 2007. 2.) All Together Now CD Originally Mailorder Only, Released October 2006 People Like Us proudly present 27 minutes [...]
Vicki Benett - People Like Us (always) In a creative commons, we can find People Like Us ; people who value creativity and collaboration above copyrights. It seems the best challenge of excessive restriction is actually demonstrating the spirit of the open source argument. Especially since very few of us have legislators who will tell our stories to power like Gregg "Girl Talk" Gillis' Representative Mike Doyle . I've always had a stronger feeling for what I stand against that what [...]

With my attention span declining by an average of three seconds per year, I thought it was high time to hold a sixty second song remix contest. The rules are simple: take any "known" song (whatever that means, I know, I know...) and reduce it to sixty seconds or less. I'd like to get 78 of these, if possible, so enter as many times as you like! I'll be playing these on the air and posting many of them here as well. Extra credit for reducing extra long songs (such as those listed in Resident [...]
Vicki Bennett wears two hats: as host of the WFMU radio show " Do or D.I.Y. ," home of all things " avant -retard," she spins everything from ethnic music to kitschy novelties to the work of experimental "composers," revealing the musics' connections and obliterating any artificial genre classifications in the process. As People Like Us , she anticipated the mashup scene by years, creating surreal audio and visual collages that burst with an almost childlike glee, but, as on [...]

Download Mp3 26.5mb (28:53) I've been enjoying alot of Mashups, Mixes, Collage Art, audio latley There is tremendous talent in Remix, Reuse, Resampling into new audio artforms from old ones I am constantly in awe of some of the artists & Dj's out there so of course I had to do a show featuring only a sampling (no pun intended)of this growing trend of artistic ability. Featuring artists: Deaf In The Family, Team9, Mochipet, Voicedude, People Like Us,Totom and Splice [...]

People Like Us is the name that Vicki Bennett uses as she creates various sonic and visual recontextualizations of found footage. A pioneer at the edges of art and technology and the law, she walks the walk and talks the talk in the Commons. Her work is complex, challenging and always filled with wit and humour as she brings her considerable technical skills to the raw materials that she draws from popular culture. Through performances, workshops, and work, she exemplifies all that is good in the world of audio art. A wide swath of her work is [...]