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Matthew Herbert

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Matthew Herbert

Matthew Herbert (born in 1972), also known as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, Wishmountain, and DJ Empty, is a British electronic musician. He often takes sounds from everyday items to produce electronic music.

Matthew Herbert released his first album, 100 Lbs, in 1996, which “gathers early 12″s from a time when Herbert was very much a ‘dance music’ producer”. In 1998, Herbert issued Around the House with Dani Siciliano, which mixed dance beats, sounds generated by everyday kitchen objects, and vocals. By the late 90's, Herbert was remixing tracks for dance artists like Moloko, Motorbass, Alter Ego, and others. (Many of these were later collected on Secondhand Sounds: Herbert Remixes.) He also recorded singles, EPs, and albums under a variety of aliases (Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, and Transformer) as well as his own name.

In 2001, Herbert issued Bodily Functions. Similar in structure to Around the House, it featured sounds generated by manipulating human hair and skin as well as internal bodily organs. Bodily Functions benefited a record deal with Studio !K7, making it Herbert's first full-length work to receive worldwide distribution.

Goodbye Swingtime, a 2003 album issued under the name The Matthew Herbert Big Band, combined the political commentary of Radio Boy with the song structure of his Herbert albums. Recorded with sixteen musicians from the British jazz world, including saxophonists Dave O'Higgins and Nigel Hitchcock, pianist Phil Parnell, and bassist Dave Green, the band is complemented on stage by Siciliano, Arto Lindsay, Warp recording artist Jamie Lidell, and Mara Carlyle.

In 2005, he released a record entitled Plat du Jour, a record made entirely from objects and situations in the food chain. He recorded beneath the sewers of Fleet Street, with Vietnamese coffee beans, inside industrial chicken farms, drove a tank over a recreation of the dinner that Nigella Lawson cooked for George Bush and Tony Blair, and recorded 3500 people biting an apple at the same time. The track entitled "The Final Meal of Stacey Lawton" was made in collaboration with renowned chef Heston Blumenthal.

On 30 May 2006, Herbert issued Scale, his most successful album to date. In the US, it reached number 20 on Billboard's electronic music album chart. Entertainment Weekly remarked, "Herbert sneakily subverts Scale's apocalyptic thematic thread into something warm and danceable." Online magazine Pitchfork Media noted, "Sophisticated and whimsical, joyful and yet tinged with sadness, Scale is one of this year's great albums."

The second album by The Matthew Herbert Big Band, There's Me And There's You, was released in October 2008. In the making of the record Herbert recorded inside the Houses of Parliament, at a landfill site, and in the lobby of the British Museum with 70 volunteers.

In 2009 Matthew Herbert was involved in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest. He wrote and produced the music accompanying the 42 "postcards," short films introducing the country being represented next. In addition, Herbert wrote an orchestral piece for an interval act involving two "children flying in on a giant plastic swan."

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