MATTHEW HERBERT | a collection of stories made by everyday sounds by Barbara Mulas

MATTHEW HERBERT A COLLECTOR OF STORIES MADE BY EVERYDAY SOUNDS BARBARA MULAS – 314808 CURATORIAL PRACTICE MAY 2016

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

INDEX 0. Introduction

1. Matthew Herbert 1.1 A biographical introduction 1.2 A bit of his career : his productions 1.3 THE CASIO SF 1 2. A collection of stories 2.1 The archive of sampled sounds 2.2 Archiving for the future 3. Critical music for the future – two case studies 3.1 Day in a life (2011) | Collecting beauty and ordinary 3.2 Plat du Jour (2005) | Collecting food consumption, distribution, and its corruption 4. Conclusion: What is Matthew Herbert doing?

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

0. Introduction During the second semester of the Curatorial Practice’ MA I am currently attending at Bath Spa University, my peers and I were introduced to the world of Collectors and Collecting, through which we visited very different collections – both private and public-‐, which have introduced us to a vast universe made by diversity, almost uniqueness. From this module we have been stimulated to develop a research on a collection or collector of interest, and I decided to explore the ephemeral practice of collecting and archiving sounds. Specifically, I have been fascinated by the power of archiving for public and useful purposes and, forthwith, Matthew Herbert’ practice came to my mind. Matthew Herbert represents a special figure quite difficult to classify; he is an experimental musician and artist, who has been producing, and still produces, in the field of electronic music for more than twenty years. He is also a private collector acting as a public one would do1: his collection of sounds is private and definitely not accessible to everyone since it represents his artistic research and materials to be transformed then in sound stories, but the main purpose is public indeed: he uses it to tell people stories with the ambition, as declared by him, “to change the world” (Herbert, 2016). His body of works represents an expanded ephemeral “museum”, easily available to everyone and from everywhere. Herbert is an archivist, activist sound collector and digital storyteller (Stephens, 2011).

With a kind of extreme and generic vision, collecting can be divided in two types: Private collecting is mainly about individual taste, ownership and/or fanaticism, and could be express as collecting for the sake of possessing. (Elsner & Cardinal, 1997) Public collecting, which is more orientated on preserving, gathering together and using the collection’ materials to tell different stories, and it is indeed for the sake of the future memory and public awareness. (Dudley, 2012)

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

To understand is practice of collecting appears now essential to mention his way of producing: the sample2. What Matthew Herbert does to produce his music is, basically, archiving ordinary, yet specific, sounds from everyday life, sample them, decompose them and transform them in to electronic music. He could be seen as a stories’ collector, an alchemist and a massive provocateur: what he produces has been called electro-‐organic music – as defined by the Accidental Record3 label’s website-‐: still full of jazzy feelings, yet not really easy to digest. Music, for him, has a great power as a medium, and it should be as much critical as documentary and photography are. For this reason, every sound he collects and decides to use has a profound reason why. In his long career he played packs of crisps, he collected sounds from the house, from the body, or from the most sold Tesco’ products. He documented the life of a pig, from birth to the plate, and decomposed and recomposed a 5 seconds’ recording from a pro-‐Gheddafi bomb plane. He’s an innovator, a transgressor of genres and, as said before, a brilliant provocateur. With his critical and political music, he wants to press pause and make people think, from his sound and around it. With this essay I will try to explain why his practice of archiving sounds can’t be considered just for the sake of it, but for the future.

As stated by Dean Garraghty in his useful yet easy-‐to-‐understand article “Sound sampling: what it is, how it's done, and how to get the most out of it”, “sound sampling is a way of converting real sounds into a form” that 2 can be stored, and replayed (1990). Sampling means collecting external analogue sounds, which are archived and then transformed in to digital to be recognized by technology, and reused. 3 Accidental Record has been launched in January 2000, and represents the overall title for Matthew Herbert’s numerous labels.

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

1. Matthew Herbert 1.1 A biographical introduction Matthew Herbert is someone whose career can’t be described just in one word. He was born in the UK in 1972 and he has always been involved in and fascinated by sound: his father was a BBC’ sound technician; when he was four years old he learnt piano and violin, and around seven he was singing in the school choir and playing with orchestras. Sound has become soon his favourite medium, even though he studied Theatre at Essex University. With a career in the electronic music system long almost thirty years, Herbert gained an exorbitant consideration both among professionals and amateurs. He is publicly known in the electronic music field as musician, producer and DJ, yet he’s also accredited as artist and writer. He has produced EPs, Singles and Albums under several monikers, and performed solo, as DJ and with other internationally-‐known artists –such as Bjork. He has produced music for theatre, cinema, TV and radio, and he has created pieces for installations and plays (Matthewherbert website). Herbert’s practice follows a Manifesto he launched around 2000, the P.C.C.O.M. (PERSONAL CONTRACT FOR THE COMPOSITION OF MUSIC) [INCORPORATING THE MANIFESTO OF MISTAKES]4; he also produces other artists under his label Accidental Records, and he’s the current artistic director of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop;

Matthew Herbert, in producing his music, strictly follows the P.C.C.O.M. (PERSONAL CONTRACT FOR THE COMPOSITION OF MUSIC) [INCORPORATING THE MANIFESTO OF MISTAKES]. The manifesto abhors and thus prohibits the use of drum machines, synthesizers and presets; even though conceived during the 90’s, it has 4 been made public only after DOGMA 95 -‐ the cinematographic version of the Manifesto, by the cinematographer Lars Von Trier -‐ was published. Herbert strongly believes in its principles, which has been following from the beginning of his varied career. These principles represent -‐ in a way – his artistic integrity, which for the artist is the most important value to respect and preserve untouched. “The use of sounds that exist already is not allowed”, is stated in the article #1; and it continues “Only sounds that are generated at the start of the compositional process or taken from the artist’ own previously unused archive are available for sampling” (article #3, P.C.C.O.M, 2011). A full version of is available from his website.

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

At the moment he is working on a book -‐ titled “The Music” and published by Unbound-‐, and on an itinerant sound installation called “Chorus”, shown at the Wellcome Collection in London from April 14th to July 31st 2016, as part of the exhibition “This Is A Voice”. Herbert has always had a polyhedric personality, which makes of him a prolific innovator, transgressor of genres and a massive provocateur. Resident Advisor, an online magazine and platform for electronic music, describes him as a personality “known for ignoring the boundaries and mangling the conventions traditionally associated with the genres”, and this, still according to Resident Advisor, has made a considerable impact on public and media, yet remaining an innovator and experimenter (ResidentAdvisor website). And precisely, it is the use of ordinary sounds, which he converts in to music through sampling, that makes of him a great experimenter. 1.2 A bit of his career: his productions Herbert produces electronic, experimental music, characterised by an overall jazzy and house5 feeling, under different aliases6; when asked why he adopts monikers, he told me: “They aloud me to act, to play like an actor and try different costumes. It just helps you to get out of your body, get out from your skin, that’s the biggest trap” (2016) Aliases are his restless game which has permitted him to embody different personalities and keep telling the same stories yet with different voices; according to him, thanks to it he becomes able to “keep coming to the same problem from different angles” (Herbert, 2016).

House Music is a genre first introduced in the US around the 80s, which represents a dance-‐based music characterised by unvaried 4/4 beats. 6 You can find Matthew Herbert producing under Matthew Herbert, Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain, Best Boy Electric, Dj Empty, Mr Vertigo, Mumblin’ Jim, Radio Boy, Slojak, The Music Man or The Matthew Herbert Big Band – and the list is not complete yet.

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

1.3 THE CASIO SF 1 Everything started when he discovered a sampler for the first time during the 80s, at the age of 17, and incredibly by accident – and this represents one of the stories he loves to tell the most. “I went to a music shop, and they had this CASIO SF 1, an old model of sampler. They demonstrated sampling music on it… they sampled musical pieces from recorded stuff, and this was amazing to me” (2016) The story is about Herbert kid, living in the middle of nowhere, without money nor equipment. The sampler represented a magic instrument for him; after saving enough money he bought it, and he started sampling the radio, taking and chopping music from it (Herbert 2016). But sampling other people’s music was unsatisfactory to him. Then, he found the sampler had a microphone in the back: he plugged the microphone in, and he recorded an apple for the first time. “From then on”, he told me, “everything changed” (2016); “with the invention of the sampler”, Herbert once declared, “there’s no distinction anymore between sound and music” (Herbert on Soundonsound, 2011). 2. A collection of stories 2.1 The archive of sampled sounds Matthew Herbert has been sampling and archiving sounds from the late 80’s; when he samples he keeps every recording he takes, which is immediately stored in multiples hard drives. (Herbert, 2016) Every sound for him could be important, even essential, because it represents a piece of a specific story he wants to tell. By saving and archiving this pieces of stories, he freezes the

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

time on them: what he collects are sound memories from the world. Reporting what he recently told me about it (2016): “you’ll never know what you will need. It’s like a diary, you know; I don’t have a very good memory, it’s extra information. And also in the future… you sometimes do forget, so I might do a session of recording outside, in a special place, like 5 or 6 hours, but I maybe have a couple of days to make this music. So I can’t seat for 5 or 6 hours and say: ah nice noise… Sometimes you forget. So even if you don’t use them it’s important to keep them.” Herbert’s vast, digital archival collection is made by hundred-‐thousands hours of sounds talking about very different tales, mostly even unused. While researching about his practice, I’ve been amazed by the Sonography’ section on his official website. This section, in the layout of a grill, features a precise description of every sound he used to produce every album, and it included a mention to the engineers who worked on it, which made me instantly think of a museum’s archival catalogue. But when I asked him whether it was complete, he frankly told me no, by saying (2016):

“I don’t always tell the truth. I don’t put everything on the website. There are some records for which I say nothing… or everything.” As he explained me further, the decision to tell the truth or hide it highly depends on the story behind the recordings (Herbert, 2016). Herbert’s precious sound materials are private: he is the only one who can access, and mediate; in some ways, this way of acting slightly reminds of a jealous collector: which struggles to keep his pieces hidden and safe from the rest of the world, at the cost of lying about them.

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

2.2 Archiving for the future Before starting to describe in depth how Herbert stimulates people’s consciousness trough his archival collection of sound samples, going back to the etymology of the word archive, which comes from the Greek arkheion, appears useful. Derrida and Prenowitz, in their book “Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression”, described the meaning of this ancient word: an arkheion was “a house, a domicile, an address, the residence of the superior magistrates, the archons, those who commanded” (Derrida & Prenowitz, 1995 – 9). In this place, people used to store the official documents, and the archons where the figures who embodied the duty of keeping these documents safe, and whom also personified “the power to interpret the archives” (Derrida& Prenowitz, 1995 – 10). Agreeing with the authors, this power represented –and still represents-‐ a privilege (Derrida& Prenowitz, 1995 –10), the privilege of conservation indeed, yet also institution. In line with their theory, an archive, as a matter of fact, is both revolutionary and traditional (Derrida& Prenowitz, 1995 –10): it keeps safe the memory, but he also generates the future. But how can music –a medium highly associated with entertainment-‐ stimulate people’s awareness about the world and generate change? How can an archive of sampled sounds be revolutionary? In order to help creating a better picture of what Herbert’s “telling a story” means, and how he shapes and uses his huge archive of sounds, the next chapter will be focused on the analysis of two Albums which, using the sound materials he has collected, Herbert shaped to narrate to people different stories about contemporary issues permeating the society. 3. Critical music for the future -‐ two case studies It has been said more than once that Matthew Herbert acts as an iper-‐sensitive witness, which uses music to communicate its testimony to the rest of the world. Because of its usually elaborate and elevated subjects and backgrounds, his music is not generally simple to understand and assimilate, yet with different degrees: it must not be

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

forgotten he is also part of the electronic, experimental music system, and his complicated house music has been both bought and danced by millions people; in fact, the stories laying behind them are of very different types – perhaps they go from big global issues such as food consumption or a bomb exploding, to smaller, personal narrations and diaries. In this chapter I will pause on two projects he conceived from his archive, particularly paying attention on how they’ve been produced, from what, and –most of all-‐ why. 3.1 Day in a life (2011) | Collecting beauty and ordinary Day in a life is a 107 minutes’ movie directed by Kevin Macdonald, sounded by Matthew Herbert, and produced in a partnership between YouTube and Radley Scott’s Scott Free UK between 2010 and 2011. It is a documentary, user-‐generated (national geographic movie website) movie, shot on a common day in the life: the 24th of July, 2010. The purpose of the movie was to tell to the entire world, in a full of beauty, but also integrity and reality movie, how it is to be part of it; it is a story about everyday life, an ordinary-‐day movie, shaped by collected people’s personal footage, uploaded on that day on YouTube. The film suggests us that everyone is different, but not less important for this reason; as the movie’s trailer itself states, Day In a Life witnesses “the true story of one day in planet heart”, in which people from around the globe is aloud to speak, and directly tell their stories about love, fear and hope. For this production, they counted 80.000 people subscripted to the channel from 140 Nations, collecting more than 2.000 hours of recording, documented in seventeen different formats and with different quality, which they edited to create the narrative. From an immense and chaotic archive made by other people’s memories, they were able to shape a strongly emotional yet simple visual-‐and-‐sound tale about speciality within normality. The film has been defined later a social movie, and it had such a massive resonance that it is now available on YouTube for free, and subtitled in twenty-‐five different languages.

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

3.2 Plat du Jour (2005) | Collecting food consumption, distribution, and its corruption Plat Du Jour has been produced under Matthew Herbert for Accidental Records and, similarly to Wishmountain’s Tesco7, it tells a story about food consumption and distribution, even whether in a more sophisticated way. Again, this possibility to enquire and collect about he same issue, yet with different perspectives and depth, is permitted by the use of monikers. Plat Du Jour has been a huge project generated using sounds collected from food production and preparation, which was completed only after two years of conceptual research, and six months of sound collecting (Plat Du Jour 2005). The whole project includes an album of thirteen tracks, which can be fully understand and appreciated only after a visit to the website (www.platdujour.co.uk), which works as informative catalogue, and perhaps after experiencing the live performance.8 Differently than Tesco, which could be defined quite raw and concise – he defined it bread and butter (Herbert 2016)-‐, for this projects Herbert had spent time to create something highly danceable, yet strongly critical; agreeing with O’Neill’s review on Popmatters: "the juxtaposition of Herbert's precise, seemingly innocent and light-‐hearted rhythms with heavier themes of economic exploitation and death creates an effective and practical dialectic” (O’Neill, 2006). Once again, all the samples were collected because embodying a precise meaning; as Herbert 7 Produced using the moniker Wishmountain, this Album is entirely made by sounds sampled from the Tesco’ “UK's top ten best-‐selling brands” (discogs website) in 2010. Tesco is the biggest UK’s distribution group, whose tendency is to impose prices of monopole over products and, consequently, compromising small, independent shops. Indeed, for this –and more-‐ reason, it is one of the most criticized yet powerful chains, and Herbert purpose, with the album, was mainly to stimulate people’s questioning about it. The tracks have the products’ name, which are also the main sound source of every song; for this album he sampled a Lucozade, Nescafe, Kingsmill Hovis And Warburton, Fruit Shoot, Dairy Milk, Walkers, Andrex and Coke. The sound in complex appears really raw, as Matthew Herbert himself described to me, and experimental, but it can still be considered inside electronic 8 Matthew Herbert sound stories are always supported by side, interpretation materials which help him on presenting to the public a more detailed and delineate narrative. These materials, from time to time, can be blogs, websites, interviews, videos, pictures or even performances: they are used in different ways and grades depending on the project weight.

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

himself declared, “every sound, note and object on this record has a reason for being there” (Plat Du Jour 2005) which he exhaustively explained on the website, pausing on the important details of every track9. 3. Conclusion: What is Matthew Herbert doing? “Why do we need music anymore, [and] what’s the purpose about music?” are some of the questions Herbert addresses. (Savidge on Matthewherbert.com, undated) What’s the purpose of collecting precise sound samples and gathering them in to electronic-‐ house music then? Herbert is a clever collector and a big provocateur. His collection is made by a huge, private, ephemeral archive of sounds from all around the world, talking about the contemporary, which he makes available worldwide trough the medium of his music. His production is permeated by a strong political concern, which doesn’t eliminate an aesthetical integrity so far. Although his music is massively sold and he has received great reviews in his career of musician, his production is not just for the sake of music; it can not even be considered art for the sake of art, or collecting for personal pleasure: it is functional, useful, future-‐oriented and for everybody. Herbert is a great, highly skilled music producer and a sensitive, emphatic artist and observer, who wants to be engaged in a constant dialogue with the world, and to make people engaged trough sound. As he told me, “The final ambition is to change the world, to understand it, and change it; and sound is a great way to do it” (2016).

For instance, for “The Truncated Life of a Modern Industrialised Chicken” he fully declared the sound he collected calling them field recordings (30,000 broiler chickens in one barn, 24,000 one minute old chicks in one room of a commercial hatchery, 40 free-‐range chickens in a coop, one of those chickens being killed for a local farmers' market and its feathers washed and plucked, a dozen organic eggs from Tesco and a 2.0l 21cm pyrex classic bowl made in the UK), and he explained how melodies, chords, percussions and basslines are made and from which samples. He also included a caption informing the audience about the average life of a British broiler chicken, which is between 36 and 41 days (Plat du Jour 2005).

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

What is Herbert doing with his archival collection, and subsequently with his critical music, is fighting an open and intimate yet quiet battle, which he believes everyone should fight.

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

References Primary source: Mulas B., (2016) “Interview with Matthew Herbert”, London, 12 April 2016 available from: https://www.dropbox.com/s/20s7b3rmjf6rw8u/herbert.m4a?dl=0 Secondary sources: Derrida J., Prenowitz E., (1995), “Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression”, The Johns Hopkins University Press Dogme95, (undated), “A tribute to the official Dogme95” [online] available from: http://www.dogme95.dk/dogma-‐95/ [accessed on April 2016] Dudley S.H. (edited by), (2012) “Museum Objects: Experiencing the Properties of Things”, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Elsner J., Cardinal R., (1997), “The Cultures of Collecting”, London: Reaktions Books Lt Garraghty D., (1990) “Sound sampling: what it is, how it’s done, and how to get the most out of it”, DGS [online] available from: http://www.dgs.clara.net/sampling.htm [accessed on March 2016] Herbert M., (undated), MATTHEW HERBERT [online] available from: http://matthewherbert.com [accessed on March 2016] Herbert M., (2005) “Plat Du Jour” [online] available from: http://www.platdujour.co.uk [accessed on April 2016] Herbert M., (2005), “Plat Du Jour” Accidental Record / Bandcamp [online] available from: https://accidentalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/plat-‐du-‐jour [accessed on April 2016]

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Inglis S., (2011), “Matthew Herbert: Sampling pig noises”, Sound On Sound [online] available from: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov11/articles/herbert.htm [accessed on April 2016] NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (2011) “Life In A Day”, National Geographic – Movie [online] available from: http://movies.nationalgeographic.com/movies/life-‐in-‐a-‐day/ [accessed on April 2016] O’Neil T., (2006), “Matthew Herbert: Plat Du Jour” popMATTERS [online] available from: http://www.popmatters.com/review/herbertmatthew-‐platdujour/ [accessed on April 2016] RESIDENT ADVISOR, (undated), “About” [online] available from: https://www.residentadvisor.net/about.aspx [accessed on March 2016] RESIDENT ADVISOR, (undated), “Matthew Herbert” [online] available from: https://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/matthewherbert/biography [accessed on April 2016] Stephens S., (2011) “Digital Storytelling”, Museum Practice YOUTUBE, (2010) “Life In A Day -‐ user channel” [online] available from: https://www.youtube.com/user/lifeinaday [accessed on April 2016] Total words (index, footnotes and references excluded): 3431

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary source: Mulas B., (2016) “Interview with Matthew Herbert”, London, 12 April 2016 available from: https://www.dropbox.com/s/20s7b3rmjf6rw8u/herbert.m4a?dl=0 Secondary sources: Blocker J., (2009), “Seeing Witness – Visuality and the Ethics of Testimony”, Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press Brouwer J., Mulder A., Charlton S. (edited by), (2003), “Information is Alive – Art and Theory on Archiving and Retrieving Data”, Rotterdam: V2_ Nai Publishers Connarty J. & Lanyon J. (edited by), (2006), “Ghosting: The Role of the Archive within Contemporary Artists’ Film and Video”, Bristol: Picture This Moving Image Derrida J., Prenowitz E., (1995), “Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression”, The Johns Hopkins University Press Dogme95, (undated), “A tribute to the official Dogme95” [online] available from: http://www.dogme95.dk/dogma-‐95/ [accessed on April 2016] Dudley S.H. (edited by), (2012) “Museum Objects: Experiencing the Properties of Things”, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group Elsner J., Cardinal R., (1997), “The Cultures of Collecting”, London: Reaktions Books Lt Garraghty D., (1990) “Sound sampling: what it is, how it’s done, and how to get the most out of it”, DGS [online] available from: http://www.dgs.clara.net/sampling.htm [accessed on March 2016] Herbert M., (undated), MATTHEW HERBERT [online] available from: http://matthewherbert.com [accessed on March 2016]

Barbara Mulas – 314808 Curatorial Practice

Herbert M., (2005) “Plat Du Jour” [online] available from: http://www.platdujour.co.uk [accessed on April 2016] Herbert M., (2005), “Plat Du Jour” Accidental Record / Bandcamp [online] available from: https://accidentalrecords.bandcamp.com/album/plat-‐du-‐jour [accessed on April 2016] Inglis S., (2011), “Matthew Herbert: Sampling pig noises”, Sound On Sound [online] available from: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov11/articles/herbert.htm [accessed on April 2016] Johnston S. (edited by), (2008), “The Everyday”, London: Whitechapel Gallery, The MITT Press Kelly C. (edited by), (2011), “Sound”, London: Whitechapel Gallery, The MITT Press Merewether C. (edited by), (2006), “The Archive”, London: Whitechapel Gallery, The MITT Press NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC (2011) “Life In A Day”, National Geographic – Movie [online] available from: http://movies.nationalgeographic.com/movies/life-‐in-‐a-‐day/ [accessed on April 2016] O’Neil T., (2006), “Matthew Herbert: Plat Du Jour” popMATTERS [online] available from: http://www.popmatters.com/review/herbertmatthew-‐platdujour/ [accessed on April 2016] RESIDENT ADVISOR, (undated), “About” [online] available from: https://www.residentadvisor.net/about.aspx [accessed on March 2016] RESIDENT ADVISOR, (undated), “Matthew Herbert” [online] available from: https://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/matthewherbert/biography [accessed on April 2016] Stephens S., (2011) “Digital Storytelling”, Museum Practice Were G. & King J.C.H. (edited by), (2012), “Extreme Collecting: Challenging Practices for 21st Century Museums”, Bergahan Books YOUTUBE, (2010) “Life In A Day -‐ user channel” [online] available from: https://www.youtube.com/user/lifeinaday [accessed on April 2016]