This summer sees the release of new albums from Ergo Phizmiz and People Like Us & Wobbly.

Composer, multi-instrumentalist and broadcaster Ergo Phizmiz counts Michael Nyman, Simpsons creator Matt Groening and the late John Peel among his fans. Having risen to cult notoriety for his warm, wry brand of experimental electronica, he has since collaborated with post-punk heroes The The, scored a film for revered artist Christian Marclay, and undertaken various BBC Radio commissions. With new album Things To Make And Do, out August 2, Phizmiz ventures into the realm of what he describes as “eccentric pop”;  largely acoustic, it finds him deploying piano, drums, trumpet and various self-made instruments with a sense of the absurd that an accompanying press release likens to that of Vivian Stanshall in his pomp.

Out now is a new album from People Like Us, AKA sound-artist Vicki Bennett, who has collaborated in the past with Matmos, Marclay and Phizmiz himself, the latter for a 7″ on Touch, and exhibited work at Tate Modern, the National Film Theatre and the Pompidou Center. She’s pictured above with Phizmiz.

A collaboration with Bennett’s fellow audio-collagist Wobbly (AKA Jon Leidecker), Music For The Fire is a billed as 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.”

The album, composed from carefully edited live recordings, will be available as a high quality download  through Illegal Art’s pay-what-you-want scheme. Vicki Bennett is is a high-profile endorser “the gift economy”, and is the top downloaded audio artist on online release platform UbuWeb.  Her web-only album Abridged Too Far (2004) was downloaded over 25,000 downloads in one month. See below for a very short video of Bennett talking about her work as People Like Us.