Matthew Herbert - releases album "One One"
Date Posted: 25 February 2010
Release Date: 12 April 2010
Label: Accidental
Winner of the Showing Off... Tenth award for services beyond etc. to the very idea of being a restless militant outsider musical progressive in a culture increasingly cuddling up to conformity... The Guardian, Paul Morley
“dazzling”, “brilliantly choreographed” ” ***** The Times
PIONEERING musician and producer Matthew Herbert (Bodily Functions, Matthew Herbert Big Band) will release the first part of his “One” trilogy in March under his label Accidental Records.
One One is a radical departure from Herbert's modus operandi of orchestrating extraordinarily complex means of making sounds which are then sampled and used to build his music.
Matthew has taken the concept of a solo album to its logical conclusion and has written, performed, recorded and produced the 10 track record entirely by himself.
One One features Matthew singing for the first time. The result is his most intimate and “honest” musical production since he first performed live as Wishmountain in 1995, using only a pepper pot as an instrument.
Matthew says: “Singing for the record was surprisingly difficult. There was no-one there to tell me if I was terrible, and if I was terrible I had to fix it myself. I couldn't hide behind nifty production tricks.
“At times it took dressing in a black tuxedo and half a bottle of wine to get over the nerves. I didn't know how to play many of the instruments when I started. This is a really personal and honest record.”
One One was recorded over four months at Matthew's private studio in the seaside town of Whitstable, Kent, with the tracks chronicling a single day in the life.
The One trilogy is the result of a musical “rebound” from the last Matthew Herbert Big Band release, There’s You And There’s Me. The album involved 2,000 samples produced by more than 350 people.
The second in the series is One Club being released in May 2010. The samples used for the album were recorded in their entirety at the Robert Johnson club in Frankfurt, Germany, between 8pm and 10pm on September 30 this year (2009).
Matthew turned the microphones on the audience - recording dancing, kissing, laughter, mobile phone rings and a plethora of sounds. He even recorded private conversations and sounds from the toilets. The resulting album will be given free to each of the 600 people who took part.
Matthew says: “I was sitting in my studio alone and began to think about how egotistical producing music can be. I wanted to turn the microphones around and give the audience the chance to collectively decide the musical outcome.”
The One Trilogy concludes with One Pig, released in July 2010, which will use sampled sounds from the life of a pig reared at a Farm in Kent, slaughtered, and then eaten.
Matthew says: “I wanted to record one human life and make that into a record but it soon became clear that following someone from the cradle to the grave is too difficult. Pigs are animals which humans totally rely on in many different ways, yet systematically abuse, so I felt this would be an excellent representation of a modern life.”
Notes to Editors:
Matthew Herbert is an extraordinarily imaginative and versatile artist with his creative output ranging from minimal House through musique concrete to polemical, protest pop.
His music has been presented at the Royal Court, on Broadway, The Sydney Opera House and the Almeida. He is currently engaged remixing Mahler’s 10th Symphony for Deutsche Grammaphon.
Recording under his own name as well as Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain, Radio Boy and others, Herbert has also produced and remixed artists as diverse as Bjork, REM, John Cale, Roisin Murphy, Yoko Ono and Serge Gainsbourg.
The Matthew Herbert Big Band performed this year to rave reviews at London’s Barbican for the British Council’s 75th birthday with Eska Mtungwazi and The Goldsmiths Vocal Ensemble.
