The frontman for Herbert likes playing with perceptions. A piece of orchestration that sounds like a sample is actually music by a 53-piece orchestra. if you notice an odd tone to the drumming, it could be because drummer Leo Taylor recorded at 2,000 feet in a hot-air balloon, or at 100 miles per hour in the back of Herbert’s car.
“I consider [my music] in some way like a Trojan Horse, going into maybe a pop world and trying to put ideas in there,” says Matthew Herbert.
On “Scale,” his latest CD, Herbert used 70 to 80 different musicians, including a big band and an orchestra. And in addition to drumming in the balloon and the car, Taylor also drummed underwater and in an underground cave. “I wanted to see if he would play differently if it was a life-threatening drum situation,” says Herbert.
Herbert is about breaking the barriers of creativity “even if I fall flat on my face or look like an idiot doing it, or it looks pompous or sounds presumptuous.” Drumming may come from pounding on coffins. “It might be that [listeners] find out later that the beat that they danced to was made out of shampoo or twelve golf swings,” he says.
The man who used fans’ answering messages from “Herbert’s Hotline” on the song “Just Once” doesn’t like the box that pop music is in right now. “We have the most closed vision of what music could be right now,” he says. “It's a repetition of ideas, and what's really amazing is that electronic music and house music is often happy to repeat ideas that are an hour old.”
Herbert actually created his own manifesto — similar to the “Dogma” filmmakers’ manifesto of using natural light and only using music that appears in the scene. For Herbert, that means “you can't record anyone else's music; I can't use any sounds that I have used before; no drum machine, no presets; [not allowing] myself to make music based on other people’s ideas or starting points, but to try and be as original as possible.”
This may all sound kind of weighty, but his music is almost the opposite; it’s hard not to picture such songs as “Moving like a Train” sending everyone in a club out on the dance floor. It’s addictive, danceable pop that you’ll find running through your head long after you’ve turned off your stereo.
A large part of the CD’s appeal comes from the incredible voice of Herbert's partner and collaborator Dani Siciliano, whose voice can take the form of a seductive whisper or a full-voiced croon. There’s an ambition and sumptuousness in the way the songs are orchestrated that may seem like overload at first — almost a throwback to disco — but it’s so refreshingly audacious that it stands in stark contrast to the sound-a-like bands you’ll hear even on alternative radio.
Herbert says of “Scale,” “It is certainly a passionate record that comes from a place of real frustration in me about the world. I'm very angry about the world, very angry about the war, very angry about the circumstances in which the world is going.” That passion is evident in the album’s lyrics.
On “The Movers and the Shakers” he writes, “don’t want to fight for a feeling / We need a better kinder dreaming / Don’t need another fool, a faker / Be a mover and a shaker.” Yes, it’s true, you will find yourself shaking your butt to what appears to be a critique of Tony Blair and the Bush Administration. But it only seems right that Herbert’s Trojan horse should carry lyrical weapons as well as musical ones.
“I'm trying to seduce you into listening to something different,” he says, “seduce you into [becoming] a critic; seduce you into a story that you [don’t] necessarily want to know.” Don’t be surprised if you find yourself grooving to songs about overuse of natural resources. Give in, listen and, of course, dance.
For more information on Herbert, visit: http://www.matthewherbert.net/.