Send "The Matthew Herbert Big Band " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Musicomh |
 Hold on a minute, though - before you swoon in wonderment at my ability to defy gravity with a full-throated grasp of Matthew Herbert's incandescent jazz style, it's vitally important you know it's not me singing. Not for more than a second in the middle of a track, at any rate.Confused? Not if you're familiar with Herbert's methods of composition, as his second big band opus combines full brass section and pianos with his astonishing aptitude for sonic experimentation made good and imaginative. One hundred voices contribute one hundred words in Knowing, each recorded by their owner and, in this case at least, softly sung into a Dictaphone in a South London kitchen at 2 in the morning, following clear direction from Herbert. Each word is cut and pasted on to the final picture, together with subtly muted trumpets and trombones....full text |
| Cokemachineglow |
| Discipline, limitation, and healthy doses of frustration and perfectionism inform a great deal of Matthew Herbert’s work. Ironically, from such confines have come a number of masterpiece meditations on freedom, tyranny, and power. Back in the summer days of Listravaganza, I referenced Herbert’s Personal Contract for the Composition of Music (PCCOM) in a satirical list of ideas for the next Matmos release. Consider the latter duo, another act that has made a name through experimentally conceptual works. Matmos tends to get dirty, however; you can subconsciously tell that you’re hearing fat being sucked through a tube or compressions on a cow uterus. While Herbert’s methodology might be equally mired in muck as Matmos’ at times, the final productions sound undeniably like high culture. Tell me you couldn’t play this at the right dinner party or art gala. Clean as the sounds might be, nothing is generally what it seems in a Herbert track. Perhaps the bourgeois nature of the productions, more than just symptomatic of Herbert’s love affair with big band jazz (and you can hear it in more than just the Matthew Herbert Big Band albums), is all part of the silk purse from the sow’s ears. Let’s think of this in another way: We, the undersigned, believe that music can still be a political force of note and not just the soundtrack to over-consumption. This declaration, accompanied by 18 signatories, makes up the cover art for There’s Me And There’s You. Taken at face value, it’s a reiteration of what any Herbert listener knows—despite his obsessions with “magic and accident” in music, there are no incidentally gathered samples. He’s not going to rap on a table just because it sounds good, but if it’s an antique situated in the British House of Parliament, well, that’s another thing. And, once again, in the end we have a cohesive aesthetic work from what can be the most disparate, nonmusical, and downright ugly sampled material. Think of the “magic” part as alchemy....full text |
| Urb |
| For an album that raises a voice of protest against war, government injustices and other societal ills, this second offering from this Matthew Herbert-led collaborative jazz project sure is an upbeat affair. There are lots of disjointed choruses of flashy horns and peppy rhythms with vocalist Eska out in front delightedly delivering pointed lyrics chastising the media, the government and religious institutions. She handles the overt messaging, and Herbert underlines her points with subversively polemic samples that unpretentiously work their way into the rhythms and refrains. Sounds of matches rattled in Parliament’s basement, the beep of his prematurely born son’s neonatal incubator, condoms dragged on a floor, and nails being hammered into a coffin make allegorical statements, and field recordings from the West Bank deliver their message directly. The developed avant-jazz compositions stand out just fine, but with all their consequential underpinnings, Herbert and the band are swinging on all levels....full text |
The Matthew Herbert Big Band lyrics
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