Features | Interviews
Herbert
By Aaron Newell | 25 January 2007
CMG's Aaron Newell (CMG): I'm interested in your Contract for the Composition of Music. Do I have this right -- you've barred yourself from sampling recorded music, presumably doing so for some sort of benevolent purpose? Can you explain what the Contract is, and why?
Matthew Herbert (MH): who said anything about benevolent? it's about being original. i would like to be original in what i do, even if i fail. how can a musical work be considered wholly original if it uses, to differing degrees of importance, someone else's work as its basis?
CMG: So how do you feel about compositional DJ records -- do you think that DJ Shadow's technique from Endtroducing which is 100% sample-based, maybe 15% David Axelrod, 2% Shawn Phillips, etc., is the creative boon that it's held out to be?
MH: i think it's a cold record. i much prefer de la soul 3 ft high and rising. or dj premier. the samples have more life to them. it's hard therefore for me to consider a record to be a 'creative boon' when its not to my taste. furthermore, whilst it might have some artistic merit, the politics and context of it are ignored, the stories from the original music just consumed in to a third whole. it is a rewriting of history. i'm not a big fan of such an endeavour.
CMG: You've built a fictional nation-state, which can be visited online. Same line of questions: what and why?
MH: i refer you to me text on the site:
it is a tough brief to start a new country. it is with some humility therefore that from the onset, we have decided to be entirely open about the process. we do not profess to have all the answers, but we do posses a passion to organise ourselves differently to the current systems of privilege and handicap assumed at birth.
i have an exhaustion with the direction of the physical world. as a global population, we agree on what is wrong, but have developed paths that are entirely antithetical to the one to rectify that. the uk government talks about reducing its contribution to climate change, yet has no desire to limit the sales of private car ownership. apparently, the individual's right to drive is held as a higher priority than the universal human right to clear air. we have in the uk perfectly drinkable tap water, and yet we fly in water from around the world in plastic bottles whose life span is an hour on our table, and then several hundred in the ground. maybe we shouldn't be doing this. maybe we don't have to accept the influence of american foreign policy in our everyday lives, despite being unable to vote. what we choose to buy or not buy is not a way to express ourselves. why, when transnational companies treat us as global consumers, can we only react locally? why do i share similar ideals with someone in brazil or iraq but have no formal bind to represent that?
so why not start a country? only this time, a virtual one. free from the necessity to defend its borders physically, we can reduce the violence of exclusion. a new description of resistance.
and of course, it must present an alternative. a place where value can be described by those who need it, rather than those who need to sell it. for our first and opening structure, we have chosen the model of a university. except without a dean, without chosen students, without a grand inflexible structure to separate and suffocate. a university with infinite departments, if that's even what we want to call them. i even thought these departments could be a department of one. the simplest way i could think of of describing my interests. where else is there a place in the world for me to study, compose and organise my interests in john cage, john pilger, michel gondry, paul auster, stevie wonder, mid-80's bmw alpinas, mountain bike courses in southern england, US foreign policy, good woodland practice and so on.
our university will begin to publish things. begin to put ideas out there. please bear with us while we work out how.
for now though, our country is simply here. as yet it has no name, it is simply country x.
a place where three new citizens have settled for the first time. we are unclear of where to start building, unsure if we should even be here in the first place, ready to ask a lot of questions, ready to commit to the most non-polluting vision we can muster, ready to defend our borders with the gentlest of hands, ready to resist the urge to exploit.
if you would like to join, we have an unlimited immigration and emigration policy. you are free to come and go as you wish. we would hope that your reason to join would be that you too would like to take greater control over not only your own life, but also the way power is used by the few to herd and splinter the many. we would hope that you can recognise our desire to never claim any earthly site as our own.
in our infant and infinite statement of belief, i consider this our first right: the right to a peaceful death
CMG: I think it's interesting that you've made a "political" record by name, that isn't obviously political, is actually quite cryptically and esoterically political, yet have formed some ideas of where and how to change things.
MH: it is important that as well as providing an informed critique of something, you also attempt to create a viable alternative.
CMG: One of the things that aggravates about "political" music (like Living With War by Neil Young, for example -- "Let's impeach the president!") is that it just seems to pile more questions on the heap, without getting any closer to answers. Slogans only go so far. Some would even say that this type of music is more smokescreen than anything else.
MH: maybe it aggravates you, but neil probably feels like he has no choice. why do you expect musicians to have the answers? in a society where the mainstream corporate media decides what kind of questions are asked, it's no surprise that the answers are unsatisfying. if nothing else, neil is adding his voice to the chorus of disapproval. i do believe that our governments should be the ones answering the questions. for example, why, when the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were born and financed from saudi, was afghanistan bombed? why in the (despicable and fictional) 'war on terror', was iraq attacked when it was free from terrorism? why is bush in power when both gore and kerry won?
CMG: Did you write the lyrics for Scale?
MH: yes
CMG: Is there a sentiment of powerlessness in words like: "I just don't know how to bring about your downfall / Damn fool / Go figure out / How those Christian bones / Can orchestrate / Shock and awe," or are you directing the listener more to questions about religion, ideology?
MH: its absolute outrage. absolute anger. i'm inviting the listener to share in the outrage. i don't feel powerless, i feel confused how to act sometimes. i can't decide whether to continue to try and create political music in an age of pop indifference, or to volunteer on the ground somewhere and get my hands dirty. which gesture has more meaning, the one that has some intellectual global influence, or one that affects genuine local change?
CMG: Other parts of the record touch on other social elements: "Something Isn't Right" has the line: "I won't pander to it all / join an army not a school" -- more answers?
MH: i think we should learn about the life cycle of the yew tree, not how to fire an ak47. i saw that ak47 is in the top 10 brands quoted in hip hop lyrics. it seems pop music is telling us the same stories as the government.
CMG: I think "Movie Star" has the most interesting lyrics on the record, but I'm reluctant to parse them out, because of the essay it might require.
MH: ok.
CMG: In your Pitchfork interview you wrote "In my work I want to tell a story, save lies, change the world, bring down the Tory government, end the American empire. And, of course, I'm going to fall on my ass and look stupid while doing that. I made a decision that if my music suffers as a result or people think I'm too serious or think I'm this or that, that's a price I'm willing to pay." When you're labouring with over 720 sample sources and a professional orchestra, how can you say you're putting the music second?
MH: the 720 sampled sounds (even though there's more than that), contain the stories first. the music is just a different way of ordering them. the orchestra is decoration.
CMG: Another point that came out from the 'Fork interview was this: "[the record has] the sound of 12 coffins closing from the inside, and unless you're buried alive, it's a sound you're never going to hear. There are a dozen different types of cars. There are zoo animals playing percussion. There are all different types of things in there. In a way, with this record, what I wanted to do was make a record and not really tell those people what those things are.with this record I wanted to make them guess if they wanted to or ignore them if they wanted to. I like the idea of being at a dinner party in 20 years and having someone say that they like this piece or what have you, and I say, "Well, actually, that song is about death and it's actually made from coffins," even though it sounds like a feel-good piece." Do you think we need a map in order to "get" the record, if the sounds, which carry some of the themes, are so difficult to parse out, because you've integrated them so well into jazzy, big band strings and horns? Ignoring the thematic sample sources and just never hearing them are two very different things.
MH: i have great difficulty in accepting the word 'hear' when it comes to meaning. the sound of the sea is very different to someone who spent a happy childhood there, to someone who's father was a fisherman who drowned. there is no right way to listen to sound, therefore there is no right way to listen to this music. i am attempting to stimulate people's imagination to enquire further about the sources of these sounds, and by implication, their environment. a map is clearly useful to people, but it is a lazy way in many respects.
there are two types of sounds in my music: extraordinary sounds, and familiar sounds. there are car doors, horns, indicators and ignition on this record in several places, so you can't tell me that you don't know what these sounds are. there is, also the sound of a coffin lid closing recorded from the inside. it is unlikely that you would recognise this. the work then contains a series of questions. three of them being: do people respond more emotionally to familiar sounds or to unfamiliar sounds? is there a democracy to how people hear music, even when the meaning is vastly different? is the sound of a coffin closing innately spooky? the process of making this music public is to attempt to answer a few of these many questions. maybe next time, i have some answers and can change my music accordingly.
lastly i disagree that the harmonic arrangement disguises the sound, i think that the ear is traditionally drawn first to melody. such a tradition is something i wish to challenge. whether the audience joins in that challenge or not, is entirely up to them. the purpose of this record however is to attempt to create a complete picture where every part reinforces the meaning of the other. so if the track is about the end of oil, it has lyrics that express that, harmony that alludes to that and sounds that support that. it begins to look unsteady of course when you start dismantling it, in the same way that a community starts to look peculiar when individuals are considered in isolation.
CMG: Do you think the more non-obvious 'messages' will resonate by osmosis?
MH: i don't think they'll be absorbed through a semi-permeable membrane. however i do think that somewhere in a listener's brain there is a part that can recognise the sound of a car door closing, even if the conscious mind is distracted by the context.
CMG: It seems like it's tough to figure out where to leave the Easter eggs on something like this -- I know hip hop producers often use samples that have secondary meaning, like Buck 65 sampled music from the score to Stephen King's "Carrie" for a song where he depicts himself as a social outcast, but you'd never pick up on it unless you were watching the movie while your memory of the song was fresh.
MH: just because some people will miss some of the meanings doesn't alter the fact that that meaning is there. am i supposed to write down to my audience? you couldn't possibly know the detailed meaning of a caspar friedrich painting without a knowledge of 18th century christian symbolism. art is full of layers of meaning, its up to the audience to see how far they wish to engage with it. i feel it is my responsibility to consider and create as many layers as possible. the journey should be rewarding.
CMG: Our reviewer, Mark Abraham wrote the following: ".all you need to embrace the political concept of Scale is to accept that the sounds you are listening to might be shampoo bottles, or golf clubs, or vomiting, because for Herbert there is no hierarchy to instrumentation, or, rather, everything is an instrument." I might be misinterpreting both his words and your work, but is it accurate to say that there's a democratic subtext in how you've built Scale, that each and every person plays a vital role in "politics," regardless of whether they realize it, or how detached they feel they are from the process?
MH: that is a fair assumption. i am trying to create some kind of community where every part supports itself and those around it, both harmonically and politically. at the moment this micro community has its weak links and problems, but hopefully i still have time to figure out how i can improve these, how i can invite others in to learn from and so on. this is of course, a metaphor for the world outside of the album, only there the guns actually kill which makes the stakes somewhat higher.
CMG: What/Who do you play during your dj sets? And what do you listen to for enjoyment..
MH: wonky house music. silence.
CMG: Last one: on "Down" we get:
"you wanna / you wanna / you wanna put it in my / you see my / and how it's / and how it wants to feel your"
Please differentiate this from Will.I.Am's and Pussycat Dolls' "Beep," which goes:
[Will.I.Am] It's funny how a man only thinks about the... / You got a real big heart, but I'm looking your... / You got real big brains, but I'm looking at your... / Girl, there ain't no pain in me looking at your... / [PCD] I don't give a... / Keep looking at my... / 'Cause it don't mean a thing if you're looking at my... / I'm a do my thing while you're playing with your...
MH: that's your job
Matthew Herbert (MH): who said anything about benevolent? it's about being original. i would like to be original in what i do, even if i fail. how can a musical work be considered wholly original if it uses, to differing degrees of importance, someone else's work as its basis?
CMG: So how do you feel about compositional DJ records -- do you think that DJ Shadow's technique from Endtroducing which is 100% sample-based, maybe 15% David Axelrod, 2% Shawn Phillips, etc., is the creative boon that it's held out to be?
MH: i think it's a cold record. i much prefer de la soul 3 ft high and rising. or dj premier. the samples have more life to them. it's hard therefore for me to consider a record to be a 'creative boon' when its not to my taste. furthermore, whilst it might have some artistic merit, the politics and context of it are ignored, the stories from the original music just consumed in to a third whole. it is a rewriting of history. i'm not a big fan of such an endeavour.
CMG: You've built a fictional nation-state, which can be visited online. Same line of questions: what and why?
MH: i refer you to me text on the site:
it is a tough brief to start a new country. it is with some humility therefore that from the onset, we have decided to be entirely open about the process. we do not profess to have all the answers, but we do posses a passion to organise ourselves differently to the current systems of privilege and handicap assumed at birth.
i have an exhaustion with the direction of the physical world. as a global population, we agree on what is wrong, but have developed paths that are entirely antithetical to the one to rectify that. the uk government talks about reducing its contribution to climate change, yet has no desire to limit the sales of private car ownership. apparently, the individual's right to drive is held as a higher priority than the universal human right to clear air. we have in the uk perfectly drinkable tap water, and yet we fly in water from around the world in plastic bottles whose life span is an hour on our table, and then several hundred in the ground. maybe we shouldn't be doing this. maybe we don't have to accept the influence of american foreign policy in our everyday lives, despite being unable to vote. what we choose to buy or not buy is not a way to express ourselves. why, when transnational companies treat us as global consumers, can we only react locally? why do i share similar ideals with someone in brazil or iraq but have no formal bind to represent that?
so why not start a country? only this time, a virtual one. free from the necessity to defend its borders physically, we can reduce the violence of exclusion. a new description of resistance.
and of course, it must present an alternative. a place where value can be described by those who need it, rather than those who need to sell it. for our first and opening structure, we have chosen the model of a university. except without a dean, without chosen students, without a grand inflexible structure to separate and suffocate. a university with infinite departments, if that's even what we want to call them. i even thought these departments could be a department of one. the simplest way i could think of of describing my interests. where else is there a place in the world for me to study, compose and organise my interests in john cage, john pilger, michel gondry, paul auster, stevie wonder, mid-80's bmw alpinas, mountain bike courses in southern england, US foreign policy, good woodland practice and so on.
our university will begin to publish things. begin to put ideas out there. please bear with us while we work out how.
for now though, our country is simply here. as yet it has no name, it is simply country x.
a place where three new citizens have settled for the first time. we are unclear of where to start building, unsure if we should even be here in the first place, ready to ask a lot of questions, ready to commit to the most non-polluting vision we can muster, ready to defend our borders with the gentlest of hands, ready to resist the urge to exploit.
if you would like to join, we have an unlimited immigration and emigration policy. you are free to come and go as you wish. we would hope that your reason to join would be that you too would like to take greater control over not only your own life, but also the way power is used by the few to herd and splinter the many. we would hope that you can recognise our desire to never claim any earthly site as our own.
in our infant and infinite statement of belief, i consider this our first right: the right to a peaceful death
CMG: I think it's interesting that you've made a "political" record by name, that isn't obviously political, is actually quite cryptically and esoterically political, yet have formed some ideas of where and how to change things.
MH: it is important that as well as providing an informed critique of something, you also attempt to create a viable alternative.
CMG: One of the things that aggravates about "political" music (like Living With War by Neil Young, for example -- "Let's impeach the president!") is that it just seems to pile more questions on the heap, without getting any closer to answers. Slogans only go so far. Some would even say that this type of music is more smokescreen than anything else.
MH: maybe it aggravates you, but neil probably feels like he has no choice. why do you expect musicians to have the answers? in a society where the mainstream corporate media decides what kind of questions are asked, it's no surprise that the answers are unsatisfying. if nothing else, neil is adding his voice to the chorus of disapproval. i do believe that our governments should be the ones answering the questions. for example, why, when the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were born and financed from saudi, was afghanistan bombed? why in the (despicable and fictional) 'war on terror', was iraq attacked when it was free from terrorism? why is bush in power when both gore and kerry won?
CMG: Did you write the lyrics for Scale?
MH: yes
CMG: Is there a sentiment of powerlessness in words like: "I just don't know how to bring about your downfall / Damn fool / Go figure out / How those Christian bones / Can orchestrate / Shock and awe," or are you directing the listener more to questions about religion, ideology?
MH: its absolute outrage. absolute anger. i'm inviting the listener to share in the outrage. i don't feel powerless, i feel confused how to act sometimes. i can't decide whether to continue to try and create political music in an age of pop indifference, or to volunteer on the ground somewhere and get my hands dirty. which gesture has more meaning, the one that has some intellectual global influence, or one that affects genuine local change?
CMG: Other parts of the record touch on other social elements: "Something Isn't Right" has the line: "I won't pander to it all / join an army not a school" -- more answers?
MH: i think we should learn about the life cycle of the yew tree, not how to fire an ak47. i saw that ak47 is in the top 10 brands quoted in hip hop lyrics. it seems pop music is telling us the same stories as the government.
CMG: I think "Movie Star" has the most interesting lyrics on the record, but I'm reluctant to parse them out, because of the essay it might require.
MH: ok.
CMG: In your Pitchfork interview you wrote "In my work I want to tell a story, save lies, change the world, bring down the Tory government, end the American empire. And, of course, I'm going to fall on my ass and look stupid while doing that. I made a decision that if my music suffers as a result or people think I'm too serious or think I'm this or that, that's a price I'm willing to pay." When you're labouring with over 720 sample sources and a professional orchestra, how can you say you're putting the music second?
MH: the 720 sampled sounds (even though there's more than that), contain the stories first. the music is just a different way of ordering them. the orchestra is decoration.
CMG: Another point that came out from the 'Fork interview was this: "[the record has] the sound of 12 coffins closing from the inside, and unless you're buried alive, it's a sound you're never going to hear. There are a dozen different types of cars. There are zoo animals playing percussion. There are all different types of things in there. In a way, with this record, what I wanted to do was make a record and not really tell those people what those things are.with this record I wanted to make them guess if they wanted to or ignore them if they wanted to. I like the idea of being at a dinner party in 20 years and having someone say that they like this piece or what have you, and I say, "Well, actually, that song is about death and it's actually made from coffins," even though it sounds like a feel-good piece." Do you think we need a map in order to "get" the record, if the sounds, which carry some of the themes, are so difficult to parse out, because you've integrated them so well into jazzy, big band strings and horns? Ignoring the thematic sample sources and just never hearing them are two very different things.
MH: i have great difficulty in accepting the word 'hear' when it comes to meaning. the sound of the sea is very different to someone who spent a happy childhood there, to someone who's father was a fisherman who drowned. there is no right way to listen to sound, therefore there is no right way to listen to this music. i am attempting to stimulate people's imagination to enquire further about the sources of these sounds, and by implication, their environment. a map is clearly useful to people, but it is a lazy way in many respects.
there are two types of sounds in my music: extraordinary sounds, and familiar sounds. there are car doors, horns, indicators and ignition on this record in several places, so you can't tell me that you don't know what these sounds are. there is, also the sound of a coffin lid closing recorded from the inside. it is unlikely that you would recognise this. the work then contains a series of questions. three of them being: do people respond more emotionally to familiar sounds or to unfamiliar sounds? is there a democracy to how people hear music, even when the meaning is vastly different? is the sound of a coffin closing innately spooky? the process of making this music public is to attempt to answer a few of these many questions. maybe next time, i have some answers and can change my music accordingly.
lastly i disagree that the harmonic arrangement disguises the sound, i think that the ear is traditionally drawn first to melody. such a tradition is something i wish to challenge. whether the audience joins in that challenge or not, is entirely up to them. the purpose of this record however is to attempt to create a complete picture where every part reinforces the meaning of the other. so if the track is about the end of oil, it has lyrics that express that, harmony that alludes to that and sounds that support that. it begins to look unsteady of course when you start dismantling it, in the same way that a community starts to look peculiar when individuals are considered in isolation.
CMG: Do you think the more non-obvious 'messages' will resonate by osmosis?
MH: i don't think they'll be absorbed through a semi-permeable membrane. however i do think that somewhere in a listener's brain there is a part that can recognise the sound of a car door closing, even if the conscious mind is distracted by the context.
CMG: It seems like it's tough to figure out where to leave the Easter eggs on something like this -- I know hip hop producers often use samples that have secondary meaning, like Buck 65 sampled music from the score to Stephen King's "Carrie" for a song where he depicts himself as a social outcast, but you'd never pick up on it unless you were watching the movie while your memory of the song was fresh.
MH: just because some people will miss some of the meanings doesn't alter the fact that that meaning is there. am i supposed to write down to my audience? you couldn't possibly know the detailed meaning of a caspar friedrich painting without a knowledge of 18th century christian symbolism. art is full of layers of meaning, its up to the audience to see how far they wish to engage with it. i feel it is my responsibility to consider and create as many layers as possible. the journey should be rewarding.
CMG: Our reviewer, Mark Abraham wrote the following: ".all you need to embrace the political concept of Scale is to accept that the sounds you are listening to might be shampoo bottles, or golf clubs, or vomiting, because for Herbert there is no hierarchy to instrumentation, or, rather, everything is an instrument." I might be misinterpreting both his words and your work, but is it accurate to say that there's a democratic subtext in how you've built Scale, that each and every person plays a vital role in "politics," regardless of whether they realize it, or how detached they feel they are from the process?
MH: that is a fair assumption. i am trying to create some kind of community where every part supports itself and those around it, both harmonically and politically. at the moment this micro community has its weak links and problems, but hopefully i still have time to figure out how i can improve these, how i can invite others in to learn from and so on. this is of course, a metaphor for the world outside of the album, only there the guns actually kill which makes the stakes somewhat higher.
CMG: What/Who do you play during your dj sets? And what do you listen to for enjoyment..
MH: wonky house music. silence.
CMG: Last one: on "Down" we get:
"you wanna / you wanna / you wanna put it in my / you see my / and how it's / and how it wants to feel your"
Please differentiate this from Will.I.Am's and Pussycat Dolls' "Beep," which goes:
[Will.I.Am] It's funny how a man only thinks about the... / You got a real big heart, but I'm looking your... / You got real big brains, but I'm looking at your... / Girl, there ain't no pain in me looking at your... / [PCD] I don't give a... / Keep looking at my... / 'Cause it don't mean a thing if you're looking at my... / I'm a do my thing while you're playing with your...
MH: that's your job