PEOPLE LIKE US – Welcome Abroad

Product Description

Continuing Discrepant’s ambitious People Like Us vinyl reissue program with Welcome Aboard — a strangely relevant ten-year-old album (originally released in May 2011) when Vicki Bennett (also known as People Like Us) became stranded in the US after the Icelandic Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption closed much of northern Europe’s airspace. 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. Bennett derived thematic material of displacement, travel, and a longing for elsewhere from the natural disaster that caused her own predicament. Now strangely echoed by the Covid-19 outbreak and the various grounding of planes and stay at home policies worldwide. While the general 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. No one could have predicted how relevant this album would have been ten years later. Volcanoes or Viruses, Welcome Abroad is what happens when you’re stranded due to a freak natural occurrence trapping people all over the world and causing mass plane cancellations.

A1. Sing
A2. What Will I Do
A3. Push The Clouds Away
A4. The Sound Of The End Of Music
A5. Wonderful Wonderful
B1. Hush
B2. Driving Flying Rising Falling
B3. The Atlantic Conveyor
B4. Wandering
B5. Ever