dj matthew herbert

"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

Fwiw his project pledges amount to £650 at the moment and it's showing as 3% funded which means he's asking for minimum £20,000 to write this.

I really like The Shakes but I know the inevitable EP featuring a DJ Koze remix will make its highlights so much better.

Who is this new project even aimed at? Who is going to part money to read about an album that doesn't exist?

people really on board with Herbert as a conceptual artist? i, and everyone i know who has ever had any interest in his music, like it despite its conceptual nature. so im not sure how successful this will be.

the ideas underpinning his projects are so sophomoric and pretentious smh

It'll end up as a discounted bathroom reader you can impulse buy at the MoMA store.

it's incredibly juvenile - he's always been like this. all those interviews where he was like "you may have heard of a writer called noam chomsky. i have. you probably wouldn't like him or really understand it."

Pretty sure me and a mate came up with this idea ages ago. I like it as an idea, but asking for that amount of money is just... uh.

i see more and more kickstarter type things that are just vulgar. like an acquaintance whom i know was asking for 20k for a movie he's making recently, and i know he owns two apartments in nyc. it actually undermines the work - like they can't be bothered spending their own money on it or seeking funding from an arts council or whatever.

i also think one of the good things about eg record companies is that they'll do the schilling for you, some artists have a really bad tone when it comes to hassling people for money.

i know this is all in the context of an arts industry in which it's hard to make money, but still.

With regard to your acquaintance the money will, though, actually be used to collaborate with people to make the movie. I agree that it's a bit gauche but it will pay other people too. In this case, I know there will be cost involved in producing some artefacts but it reads like a very lazy idea to produce a product with little to no appeal and Herbert is asking for the bulk of 20k before he'll even think about sitting down and writing it. It's like he doesn't even care about the idea other than if it has the money attached to it. As a person involved in making things myself it and getting very little money for it, it kinda gets my back up.

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.

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