About Matthew Herbert
Matthew Herbert , also known as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, is a British electronic musician. He often takes sounds from everyday items to produce electronic music.
Matthew Herbert released his first album, 100 Lbs, in 1996, which “gathers early 12″s from a time when Herbert was very much a ‘dance music’ producer”. In 1998, Herbert issued Around the House with Dani Siciliano, which mixed dance beats, sounds generated by everyday kitchen objects, and vocals. By the late 90's, Herbert was remixing tracks for dance artists like Moloko, Motorbass, Alter Ego, and others. He also recorded singles, EPs, and albums under a variety of aliases as well as his own name.
In 2001, Herbert issued Bodily Functions. Similar in structure to Around the House, it featured sounds generated by manipulating human hair and skin as well as internal bodily organs. Bodily Functions benefited a record deal with Studio !K7, making it Herbert's first full-length work to receive worldwide distribution.
Goodbye Swingtime, a 2003 album issued under the name The Matthew Herbert Big Band, combined the political commentary of Radio Boy with the song structure of his Herbert albums. Recorded with sixteen musicians from the British jazz world, including saxophonists Dave O'Higgins and Nigel Hitchcock, pianist Phil Parnell, and bassist Dave Green, the band is complemented on stage by Siciliano, Arto Lindsay, Warp recording artist Jamie Lidell, and Mara Carlyle.
In 2005, he released a record entitled Plat du Jour, a record made entirely from objects and situations in the food chain. He recorded beneath the sewers of Fleet Street, with Vietnamese coffee beans, inside industrial chicken farms, drove a tank over a recreation of the dinner that Nigella Lawson cooked for George Bush and Tony Blair, and recorded 3500 people biting an apple at the same time. The track entitled "The Final Meal of Stacey Lawton" was made in collaboration with renowned chef Heston Blumenthal.
On 30 May 2006, Herbert issued Scale, his most successful album to date. In the US, it reached number 20 on Billboard's electronic music album chart. Entertainment Weekly remarked, "Herbert sneakily subverts Scale's apocalyptic thematic thread into something warm and danceable." Online magazine Pitchfork Media noted, "Sophisticated and whimsical, joyful and yet tinged with sadness, Scale is one of this year's great albums."
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