THE SOUND MAN In this case, music is not always what it seems: Matthew Herbert is a maestro on a mission INTERVIEW Ellie Good
Eyes & Ears
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atthew Herbert has his fingers in two, rather large pies. On one hand is the music pie. He runs Accidental Records, he’s a producer, a serial collaborator, a solo artist, and the leader of The Matthew Herbert Big Band (MHBB). His musical offerings are unusual and varied, ranging from minimal house to musique concrete to protest pop; often created by assembling carefully collected samples of unexpected sounds. On the other hand is the political pie. At first glance, Herbert appears like an eccentric musician who revels in using every day objects to make unusual bleeps and rhythms, but look again and you’ll see a serious musician making some big statements. In an article he wrote for the Guardian Music blog, Herbert says, “Following the invention of the sampler, we are now no longer limited to abstractions: we can record the real thing. Why use rolling string lines like Elgar to suggest the English countryside when you can nip out with a tape recorder and record the actual environment; listening in on dairy farmers going out of business, or the silence of disappearing species?” And this is exactly what he does: his is music with an absolute point. He continues, “In an age of such infinite possibilities of technique, combined with the urgent politics of now, why have music and musicians lost the urge to challenge, investigate, invent and unite? Without the backbones of principle and enquiry, music is sounding more and more like the background to a non-stop Ford commercial and less like the soundtrack to the revolution.” Herbert clearly believes in protest through music, and what better way than to cleverly weave that into truly good tunes? EggMag decided to speak to this busy pie man in order to understand a bit more about where he’s coming from. First things first. In the biography on your website, David Stubbs writes: “To his occasional despair – only Matthew Herbert does what he does”. Please can you explain to us, simply, what it actually is that you do? I organise specific sounds into music. I want to hear the world through detail: if I’m making a protest piece of music about plastic, I don’t want to hear any old plastic bag, I want to hear a Tesco plastic bag, or an Asda plastic bag –
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depending on the story I want to tell. I work with whatever form I’ve chosen at that time, trying not to create parody. So, what are you doing at the moment? I was in a session with Eska until 2am this morning. I had about two hours sleep, so bear with me! It’s worth it though – she’s a fantastic singer and musician. She sung on the last MHBB album (There’s Me and There’s You), and I’m producing her debut album. It’s taken two years to make! Any other exciting collaborations in the pipeline? Well there’s Rowdy Superstar who I’m doing some producing with and I’m also working with the interesting and totally brilliant Barbara Panther. You’re also working on a trilogy of your own albums (One One, One Club and One Pig). What’s the idea behind them? Well, the idea is that they’re all different aspects of one thing.They came about because of what I’d done previously. The last MHBB record took over 400 people and a couple of years to make – and involved about 3,000 different recordings. It required all sorts of things from negotiating access to the House of Commons to tramping through woodland to a landfill site (getting badly stung by nettles in the process), trying to get into crematoriums and banging nails in coffins. We had people from all over the world singing one word each, and I had to teach every one of them how to sing theirs. It was an expansive project with so many unknowns and a difficult technical aspect. I enjoy the democratic process of involving the audience in the project, but it’s long-winded and unpredictable. So, I wanted to swing 180° and make a record out of just one simple thing. But I couldn’t decide what the one thing should be, which is why there are three albums! Firstly, I wanted to write songs again on my own, so I made One One. One One is you, on your own, playing and singing everything. Are you any good at singing? I don’t think so, but my friends assure me it’s not too bad – I’m not totally convinced! The only reason I sang in the first place is because people kept telling me to. I also
The LAST Record took over 400 people and a couple of years to make – and involved about 3,000 different recordings had to learn how to play a few of the instruments, so it’s a very honest record. At times it took dressing in a tuxedo and drinking half a bottle of wine to get over the nerves!
IMAGES: Lucy Pope
Are you scared about Joe Public hearing you sing? Well, a bit, but I’ve been more nervous about recording sounds in Palestine, publishing the noise of cremating bodies, people being shot etc. No one seemed to give a shit about that so I can’t predict how they’ll respond to this. So what instigated the second album, One Club? One day I was sat in my studio and began thinking about how egotistical producing music can be. I had the idea to look at a building or institution that created a sense of community. I wanted to turn the microphone around and ask the audience to decide the musical outcome. With that idea, the obvious place to start, for me, was a nightclub.
You recorded One Club, in just one evening at the Robert Johnson nightclub in Frankfurt on 30 September 2009. How did that go? It was hard work, but fun. We captured some great stuff but it was very noisy, so a lot of sounds didn’t work, like the noise of two people kissing. We also tried silence which was impossible, but then, it’s a nightclub not a library! All those sub-stories are now part of the bigger view. Why did you choose that particular club? I had a long list, but I knew the owner of the club before it opened and I’ve played there for the last ten years or so. And what about the final record in the trilogy, One Pig: what made you choose a pig? Pigs are animals on which humans rely on in many different ways, but abuse systematically, so I felt this would be an www.eggmag.co.uk
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FOOTWEAR SAVES FORESTS! Put your best foot forward to help stamp out deforestation
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he Brazilian Amazon is subject to the largest annual deforestation of anywhere in the world. Its biggest cause: cattle farming. The Brazilian government assess that ranching is responsible for 80% of all their country’s deforestation, and globally, it is responsible for 14% of all annual deforestation. But probably the most terrifying statistic is that in recent years, on average, one hectare of Amazon rainforest has been lost to cattle ranchers every 18 seconds. The forest is essential for stabilising the earth’s climate as it is estimated to store between 80-120 billion tonnes of carbon, which is rather a lot really, and would otherwise be floating about in the air and making the world much hotter than it should be; speeding up our man-made global warming even more. The rise in temperatures would lead increased risk of severe natural disaster in every corner of the world, and more locally, our summers would get swelteringly hot and our winters would become unbearably cold. Plus, the Amazon is home to most of the earth’s land-based animal species. So we vote that the rainforest should stay. Luckily, so do the good people at Terra Plana, which means there’s something we can all do – and the best news is, it involves buying shoes! The ethical shoe-
makers are launching a new vegan collection of shoes in March 2010. For every pair sold, £1 will be donated to Greenpeace to help them continue their good work in fighting deforestation, namely with their campaign, Slaughtering the Amazon. Rewind 18 months and the footwear company were already busy working on a vegan range, but when Damian Peat, Terra Plana’s Brand Manager, met the people at Greenpeace onboard the Rainbow Warrior 2 in October 2008, he was inspired to get involved. He says, “When Greenpeace highlighted the destructive nature of the cattle industry on the rainforests, we decided this would be a great opportunity to really get behind our vegan line and raise both awareness and funds for Greenpeace in the process. We are hoping to raise over £13,000 – and will hopefully be continuing the collaboration on into the future.” So there we have it. Buying shoes helps reduce deforestation – and no, there is no catch For more at all. In fact, Terra Plana have gone that info on Terra extra mile in terms of appealing to our Plana see more superficial side, as their range looks terraplana.com darn good too!
ONE HECTARE OF AMAZON RAINFOREST IS LOST TO CATTLE RANCHERS EVERY 18 SECONDS
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IMAGE: © Greenpeace / Daniel Beltrá / Rodrigo Baléia
SLAUGHTERING THE AMAZON n Since the release of the Slaughtering the Amazon campaign, Nike have committed to stop using leather that comes from deforested Amazon land. n For a downloadable copy of the campaign report, go to tinyurl.com/n3zl74 n To find out more about Greenpeace and their work, visit greenpeace.org.uk
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