Since the mid-90s Matthew Herbert has been making music of various sorts under several names: Wishmountain and Radioboy for techno, Herbert for house, Doctor Rockit for some of his least categorizable output. His music is experimental, yet accessible: the Herbert stuff, in particular 1998’s Around the House (Phonography), is danceable and mellow, influenced by Herbert’s background as a teenage big-band musician (he still plays piano as well as other instruments).
Herbert’s latest, Bodily Functions (!K7) edges into downtempo jazz on some tracks while remaining perfectly danceable on others. Deliberately off-kilter blurps and bleeps build into and skitter over groovy house beats, with frequent collaborator Dani Siciliano’s coolly sensual vocals layered on top. The album is all the more impressive when one considers that Herbert adheres to a strict manifesto, or "personal contract," regarding sound creation and does not sample other records. Sound sources on Bodily Functions include a baby’s noises, bloodflow, digestion, a battery of acoustic instruments like trombone and violin, and the contents of Dani Siciliano’s purse. Arty as that all may seem, no less a house DJ than Danny Tenaglia has proclaimed himself "a big fan" of Herbert’s, including a Herbert track on his own Back to Mine compilation CD (Ultra, ’00).
I spoke with Matthew Herbert via phone from London the week before his upcoming show at Joe’s Pub.
What do you think when you see a label like "intelligent dance music"? I have some thoughts about the implications of labels like that but I imagine you have your own as well...
I think you very rarely find the musicians themselves calling stuff what it’s called by others. It’s quite funny, even people who make what you’d absolutely define as techno, for example–they won’t call it techno. It’s understandable that when people go into a record shop they need to be able to describe what they’re looking for, though, so I’m not too averse to it.
What I was getting at was that there seem to be prejudices against something that can be danced to–the implication that dance music isn’t intelligent, generally speaking. One of the things I like about your work, particularly your work as Herbert, is that it functions on a lot of different levels, you’re moved to get up and dance to it but there’s a lot going on mentally and intellectually as well.
I think that challenging music has always been very afraid of rhythm, as if it’s something alien and terrifying, or cheap, or emotional, and that that’s somehow a bad thing. I think rhythm’s a great liberator because if you have a repetitive beat or something that’s looping then that–it’s like a train track, it allows your brain or your ears to get on board, so to speak, and once you’re relaxed then it can sort of look out the windows and see what else is going on. Of course dancing is associated with something more spiritual, or more emotional or more primitive, all the things that computers are not supposed to represent.
Could you talk a bit about Dani Siciliano, how you met and what her role is with the writing, and how you work together?
I met her in ’95, ’96. We became friends and the music just evolved out of our friendship really. Dani challenges me to not use her voice in such a straight manner all the time, which is good. So she brings a lot to the music that way. In terms of the actual writing process, I write most of it, including the lyrics. She’ll come up with a sort of initial idea, perhaps some key feedback, key contributions. I’ll sort of take it and develop it from there.
We always get in trouble with each other when we try to describe it, because music is about things you can’t express in words. Dani’s often said, "What about my presence in the room?" and it’s true, I would write something different if she hadn’t been there. Can you give people royalty points for presence in rooms? [laughs] It becomes a very abstract thing.
You have this background in jazz and big bands. People were always describing what you did as "jazzy" and with Bodily Functions I would take away the "y," in that some of it is pretty much straight jazz.
I don’t have a problem with that. [laughs] Though it’s not designed to be straight jazz. It’s designed to be modern jazz in the sense that I’m trying to create something that couldn’t have been done 60 years ago, or in 1975 or whenever. The main one really is a track called "I Know," which is more upbeat and I’m basically jamming along in real time with the sampler. Because I’m taking samples I’m four bars out of sync with everybody else, so I’m sort of improvising along with the sampler, parallel to the instrumentation.
What would you tell people about your live shows who’ve maybe only heard tracks in a club or off the albums? Do you think people will dance at your show?
I don’t know, I’ve always made dance music for live shows, but people sometimes do stand and stare instead. That’s okay though. The live show is about presenting the process to people of how the music was made. If someone’s body was used, a particular part of their body was used for a particular track, then we’re trying to sample that and layer that into stuff that’s preprepared, and if there’s the sound of breaking glass in there, then maybe there’ll be breaking glass in the show. It depends. There’ll be a lot of mistakes in it, that’s the most important thing, and trying things out. We often take samples of the audience as well, I don’t know if they realize it or not, you know, little noises that they make. And at the end of the show the samples are all deleted.
In terms of the different names you’ve used for different things you’ve done, does that relate to your performance background [Herbert studied theater at university]?
Yes, it’s to do with adopting characters as a sort of writing stimulus. If I said to you, "Now go write this piece in the style of a Spanish middle-aged lady that lives in a caravan," you would write it in a very different way than you would normally. It’s a challenge to myself. I want to try to avoid repeating myself even if that’s not entirely possible. It’s a stimulus to the creative process and a way to try to avoid celebrity as well.
Do you often go out to clubs to dance or to perform?
We’re playing in clubs almost every week, around the world–that’s as Herbert–but I’ve done that pretty much my whole life, especially the last six or seven years, and deejaying every week, too. So I don’t really go to clubs much in my spare time because it’s like going back to the office. But I love clubs. I like to work in clubs because it’s a very honest and immediate environment, and it’s a challenge, you know. You have to seduce people into listening to something different because they sure as hell won’t listen to noises that don’t have some sort of immediate impact on them if they don’t want to.
It’s happened a few times that people start throwing things and shouting, they have quite simple demands but they’re also quite strict. You know, if you go into an art gallery you could put down a piece of toilet roll and you can justify it as a piece of art. And I can see how, you know, it’s justifiable and there’s points at which I do go into galleries and enjoy it. It’s the same in music, you go into a museum or a gallery space and bang two chairs together for 20 minutes and people will clap politely at the end and will think about it and sort of filter meaning from it. You do that sort of thing in a club and you’ll get a much more honest reaction, people expressing right there and then whether they like it or whether they hate it. In an installation space you may get feedback afterwards but you don’t get people going, "This is shit!" And I like that.
Herbert plays Fri., June 29, 11 p.m., at Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. Astor Pl. & 4th St.), 685-7161 x35.
