dj matthew herbert

ie if it was just "for him" why spend every interview for the last 6 years moaning about the fact that other musicians didn't do a basic university intro to left wing politics

You don't think the interviewers check out his manifesto on his website before the interview then go in and ask him specific questions about his process? Who's to blame, the interviewer for asking the same fucking question everyone asks Herbert or Herbert for indulging them with an explanation of his process?

Nah I don't buy that, he's been a complete foghorn on this stuff for as long as I can remember.

yeah, but it seems like he doesn't take himself that seriously. I saw him play the tour for Scale and he showed up onstage in a short bathrobe. Does he even dj anymore? Letsallmakemistakes is one of my favorite commercial mixes ever.

Does he even dj anymore?

He has as recently as January, if that counts. 300 person queue outside a full tent for a free show at midnight.

He has a sense of humor about himself and his own work, but he is serious about his political beliefs- I don't think that makes him po-faced or a curmudgeon. Their work isn't similar, but you could compare him to Robert Wyatt if the category is "ultra-lefty Brits who have a sense of humor"

not to mention which, if music is so meaningless unless it's overtly political, then why not actually do something completely political and not make music at all?

I sorta asked him that once (control-F "devil's-advocate"); he has plenty of thoughts on it. Ha, my general takeaway from interviewing him was that he has thought all his stuff through at pretty great length, and tied together all his meanings, and thought through why it matters that he thought through his meanings that way, and on and on. There is definitely no lack of having thought about everything, that is for sure.

How was his dj set in January?

I had a similar reaction to LG back when Scale came out because of the political content of the lyrics (I was already exhausted with hearing about the failings of Dubya, etc, from every angle). The album has since grown on me immeasurably, mostly due to the clarity and spaciousness of the production. Everything sounds so lovingly recorded and placed just so in the mix. The songwriting is not too shabby either. My only quibble is that the sound of the record is a bit too sepia-toned.

I was thinking about this political stuff earlier today, and in some respects there has always been a faction in the world of dance music that has been ultra-political/polemical (plus the history of disco, jazz, etc). So, to make the thematic content of the music itself political (a la say, Plat du Jour) is not such a stretch or simply the next step. Maybe it is simply an analog to the imperative to dance as a political act. It seems like a double-bind anyway or sometimes you want to reflect and sometimes you want to escape. It's quite a challenge to make art that does both equally well.

I always got the sense that Herbert made the moves he did because he got all he could out of house. I still haven't been able to connect with the Big Band stuff though. IIRC the song from PdJ made from the Evian (I think) bottles works as a dj tool.

xpost

I dunno, couldn't be arsed waiting for 300 people to get tired and leave the tent one by one, had already been to the Big Band and then The Bug & Warrior Queen that night

since this is verging on a herbert lovefest, here's the doctor rockit - d for doctor 12". i recorded it earlier this week. at the end of side one i hit stop before the vocal sample so that Rocket Outro is actually the last second of track 3. this is one of my favorite matthew herbert productions.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?yjmqmjjzojm

i dunno, i think i agree with his general point to be honest.

if he's using this approach that he's spent a lot of time thinking over then just what else is he meant to do? talk about 'soul'? i mean god knows we all love that!!

it's just the tone...like I said, fine if he's doing that but why does berating others have to be a part of it? if we're to give him the benefit of the doubt then why shouldn't he do that to others.

and you know...criticising others has pretty much been at the core of all this stuff with herbert for as long as I can remember. also a final point, the big band stuff is actually v conservative musically.

"Herbert criticizing others" is fine by me. What do you think we're doing here?

I don't consider my posts on this messageboard to be my career or a public persona, nor anyone else's.

Also, his much ignored big band records are fantastic. A/B them with period big band (or nu big band, see: Michael Buble) and you'll be amazed... the guy is a studio genius. I feel as if the fact that his records have "big band" in the title makes them easy to overlook... but "Something Isn't Right", his, uh, hit, is a big band song, and about par for the course for most of the material (on his most recent one, at least).

OK, Garda, but what about the working critics who also post here? And anyway, any form of music creation is itself a form of criticism.

LG, where do you get the sense he's berating people? I always feel like he ... well, very much in line with his "I have thought everything through a whole lot" mentality, I feel like he tends to be really cautious about saying "this is just what I do, and it doesn't even mean my music is better." (In that interview I linked he said "mind you, not that that necessarily makes it good music" so many times that I had to edit them out -- it's like a rote caveat for him.)

Plus: Herbert talking shit = fantastic. He once took twenty minutes to summarize the parallels between 50 Cent verses with fragments of Bush speeches.

Or wait, I guess you partly mean the "why would musicians limit themselves" and "why have musicians lost the urge to X" toward the end of that Guardian piece -- but to be honest I read those as basically rhetorical exhortations, not exactly berating other acts.

that sounds like the sort of stupid shit that made me hate going to seminars with other 18 year olds when I was in college.

nabisco my permanent sense of herbert is that he's your standard "I have read pilger, I know about the world, everyone who hasn't is a deluded idiot."

x-post either way it's still suggesting he's on some higher plane

also it is a massively facile position, who's to say what a limit is or isn't. I find his entire approach limited.

like give me 5 mins and i'll rework that herbert interview into a david cameron/margaret thatcher speech, except I can't be bothered.

i mean that only as a riposte to the bush/50 cent thing

well, not quite in the sanctimonious way you're describing -- I think he says things like "why should we limit ourselves" basically rhetorically (it's not like it stops him from championing / working on / remixing / producing not-so-political music), and I'm 99% sure, based on the reasonable think-it-through way he talks, that his response to the higher-plane thing would be along the lines of "I'm not saying I succeed at it, I just think there's value in trying." (I think I'm mostly arguing this point with you because I'd never been clear on whether he was a sanctimonious weirdo or not, and then I got this chance to talk to him, and ... he makes a pretty good and reasonable case for what he does. I was going to compare him to the type of radical who knows she holds a minority opinion and has to be considered and reasonable about it, but that type can actually be annoying as hell, totally condescending with their patience and studied open-mindedness; he doesn't seem like that to me.)

More often than not, trying to bear a lofty conceptual goal in ones work can inadvertently lead to very serious talk about it. Especially in the interview context, which is possibly the only outlet that Herbert has to describe the amount of conceptualizing that goes into his work. I'm not at all surprised that he come off as sanctimonious to some.

Case in point: that 50 Cent/Bush thing was far wittier and more illuminating than a description could really do justice

well stuff like that 50 cent/bush thing....I mean, that's just so unbelievably lame, I can't believe the lack of self awareness an adult would need to come up with that, but maybe that's just me. but it can't be, I mean come on!?

I think this is sort of extraneous to his music too, this need to push all these political views that actually are the standard texts that a massive percentage of his fans all over the world will have seen in any university course. it just feels v like a mutual backslap, like the kind of "statement" that isn't going to say anything to anyone except someone who wants to feel happy about what they already believe.

I am not against anyone trying to do something different or new with music or make a point, just I think the deadlock inherent in the political views he has (regardless of whether you agree disagree with them) means they should be kept separate from art, or at least incorporated in a more original way which he hasn't quite found yet.

x-post but it's not a "lofty conceptual goal", it's a really dull hackneyed one! only someone who agrees with herbert would slap themselves on the back and call it a "lofty conceptual goal"

I don't think he's radical at all is the thing, like it reminds me massively and more than anything of being in college at 18 and people being overly delighted with themselves cos they held an anti-west or anti-capitalist viewpoint.

But Garda, the majority of music out there comes from a pro-capitalist viewpoint, especially the genre that Herbert is working in. And any form of political music is going to appear sophomoric in the right light. Have you heard of a band called Stereolab?

Also, I feel like the things your criticizing in Herbert's music could be applied to any political band. A song isn't an essay or a documentary... but infusing it with a political message is necessary for many musicians.

I do agree with you though that, occasionally, Herbert can get trite. He's got many "why are you telling me this" moments, and you could never say that his synthesis is effortless.

your = you're, ugh.

just as a side-note: unlike with art, the point of political convictions isn't to be clever or interesting or different, it's to be correct.

(which isn't to venture an opinion on whether Herbert is correct about anything) (also NB I didn't describe him as a radical!)

I was standing on a roof on September 11 and watching the buildings collapse. We had a gig that day at the Knitting Factory. I remember standing on the roof thinking, "Wow, this is going to change hip-hop forever,"

o_O

http://pitchfork.com/features/5-10-15-20/8756-matthew-herbert/

The end of that interview is the most interesting part. Thanks for posting.

Anyone know anything about Herbert's forthcoming "20 Pianos"?

I'm listening to Bodily Functions and thinking how great it would be if 2014 brought an album under the Herbert banner. None of this big-band/esoteric/whatever BS. Also, it would be nice to hear Dani Siciliano again.

there are fifty billion herbert threads so i apologize if i missed discussion elsewhere but the part 6 ep is pretty fuckin good

i have v little patience for his stupid conceptual shenanigans, this is very straightforward

New album streaming here, it's really great: http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/may/28/herbert-the-shakes-exclusive-album-stream

Yes, enjoyed the album a lot on first listen, having fallen heavily for "Silence" a couple of weeks back.

Posting this (from the Accidental Records site) as an aide-memoirs to myself, but may be of use to others:

Vocalists on the album include Rahel Debebe-Dessalegne – who sings on Middle, Smart, Ones, Know, Silence and Warm – and Ade Omotayo – who sings on Battle, Strong, Stop, Bed, Safety and Peak – and notable highlights include Herbert’s Grandfather’s piano and a piano from Wormwood Scrubs on Smart, the sounds of UK protest marches (on Strong) and the sound of used bullets and shells from eBay on Safety. Most notable of all however is Father Wills, the vast church organ of St Jude’s church in Hampstead that provides the huge depth and scale on much of the album.

I thought Dani Siciliano was on this album.

https://unbound.co.uk/books/matthewherbert

For my next record, I will write a description of the record rather than make the music itself. It will be divided into chapters in the same way that an album is separated in to tracks. This is that book.

dogg

facepalm

"1007 more pledges needed"

"for my next record i've decided to play with the concept of it not being shit"

the shakes and the ep from last year are both excellent imo, i have never understood why he feels he has to branch out into all this dumb shit

i still fuck w/ around the house that album rules

all the old stuff is amazing.

I love Scale the most, but his ideas can get so gimmicky I feel like he should be selling his music at arts & craft fairs.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3FNi8kQwAY

What I'm trying to say is that if he was already really engaged or excited about the idea of the book he'd just sit down and write it. It doesn't really require anything more than some spare time over a certain period.

oh yeah, this is way way worse - it doesn't cost anything to do this project.

i guess that's at least true, he'll pay people and it'll be a company of sorts. still a little weird though. i've seen producers selling their album and various privileges and it doesn't often come across too well - i think there's always an element of the feeling that the person won't bother doing the thing unless they get sufficient money. i don't think art should be a vocation but people with really great ideas would just do it anyway - there's a sort of middling weariness to it sometimes.

xpost otm

also part of making art is learning and failure.

Well exactly and the process of making a record is also learning and failure especially in electronic music so how could you even write it down in advance anyway? Even his record label is called Accidental.

I'm aware that that's what you're already saying, I'm just thinking out loud.

This is beyond the pale though:

£500
Herbert Listens
Matthew will listen to you, whatever you want to say or do, at a mutually agreed place (or via Skype) for 20 minutes in complete silence, plus everything up to the collectable level
📖 Pledge £500

It's certainly no potato salad.

Much as i love this one, why does it have that sleeve? its my favourite one though

today at least

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUUDd-BaakM

That's really nice! My favourite Herbert tracks are his remix of "Sing It Back" and Dj Koze's remix of Herbert's "It's Only" (with Dani Siciliano).

Newest Herbert thing btw

https://soundcloud.com/thump/matthew-herbert-megaphone

what is the consensus pick on herbert here

i would say scale

other than his remixes, like for roisin etc

Scale is my favorite too, but mostly people pick earlier albums as their favs

bodily functions seems overrated to me tbh

So Now is probably my single fav. Herbert track with Deeper being my 2nd fav, so I like Around the House a bunch, but 100lbs is probably the LP i can play through without wanting to skip tracks. I think I bought Scale but never played it. Same with Score, which I believe is the album I recorded 1 word for, but I never played that one either.

100lbs easily but Bodily Functions is very good.

globus mix vol. 5

also allow 100 lbs

destroy everything else

Often hit and miss, whch is true of anyone prolific

100lbs seems obvious answer, anything rom that first run of twelves

"I Only Heard" >>>>>>

Ezio remix is top drawer

Not much love for Herbert on ILM? Or inconsistent?
I think the new album is lovely, but on 1 1/2 listens it's no Bodily Functions (which I rate higher than Around The House) and it's certainly no Goodbye Swingtime (which is an untouchable thing don't @ me).

Good to see Owen Pallett talking the good talk up there from 11 years ago, hi Owen!

I'm totally obsessed with Fantasy. Dropped it in a set over the weekend and it just lifted the vibe up a notch. One of my favorite tracks of the year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys1AqRN044Y

Matthew Herbert made an album using only a horse's skeleton (and an orchestra and a computer and some other musicians)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0TrfgyTo6g