MATTHEW HERBERT
Matthew Herbert is a musician and producer working predominantly in the field of electronic music. Known for ignoring the boundaries and mangling the conventions traditionally associated with the genre, he is one of the few independently-minded artists to have made a considerable impact on both media and public while striving to be innovative and experimental. As a recording artist since 1996 he has released music on a variety of record labels under aliases such as Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, under his own name and with a Big Band. In recent years he has played at The Montreux and North Sea Jazz Festivals, Paris' Pompidou Centre, Tokyo's Blue Note, Sonar and Glastonbury and supported Björk at the Hollywood Bowl. Along with over ten albums of self-written, produced and performed music, he has contributed production work to albums by Björk and Roisin Murphy and remixed artists as varied as Moloko, R.E.M., Perry Farrell, Serge Gainsbourg, Yoko Ono, John Cale, The Avalanches and Cornelius. He also owns and runs Accidental Records.
He began making music out of objects at Exeter University in the 1990s, where he was studying Drama. From bottles, jars and pepper pots he progressed to recording friends, places and experiences, effectively using the sampler, his choice of instrument, as an audio diary on many of the Doctor Rockit and Herbert releases.
Coinciding with a decision to release as much of his music on his own label as possible, the personal became subtly political on Doctor Rockit's 'Indoor Fireworks' (2000) and then overtly political soon afterwards when he began sampling explicitly-sourced objects (McDonald's food, Gap clothing, Henry Kissinger) as a protest against the excesses of corporate culture. Radio Boy's 'A Machine Drilling For Oil' set the tone and 'The Mechanics Of Destruction' album expressed the anger. The CD was distributed free at concerts and available as a free download. It remains unavailable in shops.
His 2003 Big Band album, 'Goodbye Swingtime' combined the political commentary of Radio Boy releases with the classic song writing of Herbert albums. Recorded at Abbey Road studios with sixteen musicians from the British jazz world, including saxophonists Dave O'Higgins and Nigel Hitchcock and bass-player Dave Green, it adhered to a strict working ethic established in his Personal Contract For The Composition Of Music (PCCOM). On stage, the band is complemented by vocalist Dani Siciliano and on rare occasions Arto Lindsay, Jamie Lidell and Shingai Shoniwa. In recent years he has written music for a variety of short and feature-length films, including Blanca Li's musical, 'Le Defi', Dogme director Kristian Levring's 'The Intended' and, most recently, Étienne Chatillez's 'La Confiance Regne'. Along with music for theatre productions, he has written and recorded original music for TV and for fashion shows by designers such as Laurent Mercier at Balmain, Erik Halley and Gaspard Yurkievich.
In 2004 he premiered his forthcoming album, 'Plat Du Jour', live in London, Paris and Istanbul. Both the album and the live show articulate Herbert's vehement belief that music must both inform and entertain.
PLAT DU JOUR - MATTHEW HERBERT
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 25, 2005, 8PM
Spectrum de Montreal
318 Sainte-Catherine Street West
DISCOGRAPHY
http://www.magicandaccident.com/matthew_discography.htm
The Making of Plat Du Jour
http://www.platdujour.co.uk/index.php
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MATTHEW HERBERT
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