Herbert

Although his working procedures often generate more commentary than his recordings, at least within critical circles and the U.K. and U.S. electronic-music media, Matthew Herbert pursues a restrained form of experimentation. He merges an affinity for multiple strands of dance-oriented electronic music with an urge to extend their expressive possibilities. After formal music training, he drew much of his artistic drive from the compositional opportunities offered by digital sampling, freely deploying the technique across house, electro, ambient, and techno to construct pieces whose intricate, distinctive character derives from ordinary domestic items such as utensils, dishes, and even his own physique. The albums 100lbs (1996), Around the House (1998), and Bodily Functions (2001) have come to be viewed as landmark left-field house recordings. Beginning with 2006’s Scale he has concentrated more on experimental projects and film or theater scores issued under his complete name, yet he has resumed club-oriented output as Herbert with The Shakes in 2015 and Musca in 2021.

The earliest of his productions to appear on 12-inch vinyl surfaced via the Universal Language imprint linked to Global Communication, the Horn, and his own Wishmountain endeavor; subsequently he issued a substantial body of work on Clear and Phono, respectively credited to Doctor Rockit and Herbert. Under the Doctor Rockit guise he concentrates on electro-funk that blends vintage and contemporary elements with techno, pairing metallic, percussive rhythms with playful melodic lines and unconventional samples or vocal fragments. Through the Herbert alias he produces experimental house pieces that retain the genre’s buoyant, four-on-the-floor framework while radically altering its customary methods. This distinctive method injected renewed vitality into a post-rave house aesthetic that had grown formulaic, and it found unexpected acceptance from both mainstream and underground listeners.

Alongside ongoing releases for Clear and Phono—nearly a dozen of his tracks featured on the label’s two-disc anthology The End of the Beginning—Herbert lent his remixing abilities to numerous prominent artists, among them Jonah Sharp of Spacetime Continuum, Harold Budd, Atom Heart, Moloko, Motorbass, Super Furry Animals, DJ Food, Hardfloor, and Presence. More than twenty such remixes were gathered on Secondhand Sounds: Herbert Remixes. Vocalist Dani Siciliano first appeared on the 1998 album Around the House, which drew extensively on household sounds, and maintained the partnership on Bodily Functions (2001), the Matthew Herbert Big Band’s Goodbye Swingtime (2003), Plat du Jour (2005), and Scale (2006). Herbert also compiled the 2000 mix collection Letsallmakemistakes and produced Siciliano’s Likes… as well as Roisin Murphy’s Ruby Blue. In 2008 he revisited jazz by reassembling his big band for There’s Me and There’s You. The year 2010 brought a trio of Matthew Herbert releases—One One, One Club, and One Pig—plus his reinterpretation of Mahler’s unfinished tenth symphony for Deutsche Grammophon’s Recomposed series.

Appointed creative director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 2012, Herbert nevertheless sustained his recording career. The 2013 album The End of Silence drew its sole sonic material from a five-second capture of the 2011 Battle of Ra’s Lanuf during the Libyan Civil War, supplied by photographer Sebastian Meyer. The next year he revived the Herbert alias with Part Six, Part Seven, and Part Eight, continuing a 12-inch series that had paused in the mid-1990s. The full-length Herbert album The Shakes appeared in 2015. After A Nude (The Perfect Body) in 2016, several scores, and the third Matthew Herbert Big Band album The State Between Us (2019), he issued the further domestic house album Musca in 2021.