MATTHEW HERBERT - One One

Eclectic. There's no term quite as fitting, however worn out, to define the work of Matthew Herbert. Prolific to an implausible degree, elusive in his tangle of avatars and alter egos, always beyond any contingent framework. And genre-wise too, to the point of exhausting the patience and disorienting even the most hardened of fans. Occupation: moniker. From the electro-techno of Doctor Rockit to the orchestral swing of the Big Band, by way of the tunz-concrete avant-garde of Wishmountain and the hypnotism of Radio Boy, arriving at the more or less minimal house of the Herbert project ("Around The House", made together with his beloved Dani Siciliano, 1998, is a genre must-have).

So many other things besides (DJ, producer, sought-after remixer), with Matthew Herbert as the seal and synthesis of it all, reshuffling a deck already well shuffled in itself to throw critics and audience off balance, the psychotic intellectual of the seven notes that he is.

Have you heard the latest? The thirty-eight-year-old Brit has put this album on the market as the first step of a "One" trilogy that, judging by its stated intentions, will have as its only common denominator the word "one" appearing in the title. Aside from the fine album under review here, in the coming months we're due "One Club" — reportedly made entirely from samples of noises, sounds and conversations recorded in a venue in Frankfurt — and "One Pig": same approach, but this time using the sounds produced by a pig on a farm in Kent, captured across its entire life cycle, from birth to death. This after glimpsing in the animal's behaviour and its trajectory, right up to its inescapable end, a "faithful representation of modern life".

And it's precisely the provocations and bold statements with which Matthew has built his reputation as a concrete artist (in every possible sense, including the strictly musical one) that make "One One" all the more explosive: we don't yet know how our digital dealer's three-card trick will play out — a little patience, the trilogy won't be completed until September — and yet we're willing to bet everything right now on the intimate nakedness bound up with his faint, almost never-heard voice, the true beating heart of the album. As intriguing as glimpsing the fragments of life of a man who had never before put himself ahead of the intellectual or political themes that have defined his career: a stolen snapshot, roles reversed, with the listener finally stepping backstage, or into the dim light of the recording studio, to see it all with their own eyes.

Herbert as you've never heard him before: not the wizard-like maestro who delights in penning theoretical manifestos just for the pleasure of setting them to music, not the paver of the glitch-pop highway he built fifteen years ago, nor the mentor or behind-the-scenes manipulator working for others, but sparse instrumentation, a voice, some songs. Beautiful songs, solitary digital ballads that radiate absorbed contemplations on everyday life, the kind that have stayed locked away for who knows how long in the drawers of the soul. And the choice to pair each track with the name of a city multiplies every evocation, breaking down barriers in a romantic, technological cosmopolitanism worthy of the "Planet Of The Vision" of Kraftwerkian memory. Except that instead of the ostentatious futurism coming out of Düsseldorf, Matthew Herbert moves under the radar, from the edge of a pavement, watching passers-by and the life to be absorbed into the crowd of his own thoughts. Heart-tremors that take shape in the languid folktronica of "Singapore", in the icy tribal wonder of "Dublin", in the delicate indolence of "Tonbridge" (Tarwater at the peak of their powers).

More broadly, it's a signal sent to the diehards of the German label Morr, affirming that great episodes can still be written within those atmospheres. But it goes further still, so much so that in the elevator of "Leipzig" – to paraphrase someone – it's as if Donald Fagen and the Notwist had been shut in together, while the long shadow of Ralf Hütter appears serene amid the sequencer scaffolding of "Porto". And, staying on the subject of German artists, with "Palm Springs" the eccentric Englishman goes to play magnificently on the ground once staked out by Schneider TM on his "Zoomer" (2002): what style. And what a great achievement for Matthew Herbert, who adds another unexpected piece to his body of work worth remembering.

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26/03/2010