Herbert
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Some might argue that house, more closely tied to past musical forms such as funk and disco, lacks the radical experimental side of other electronic music genres. But they would have to ignore Matthew Herbert, who for over a decade has been pushing house into collision with ideals found not just in dance music but in experimental art in general.
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Under a slew of psuedonyms, including Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, Herbert has managed to create music that successfully walks that finest of lines - delving deep into experimentation while still delivering a pop immediacy. He began his career in music while studying drama at a U.K. university in the early 90s. His early records and performances fused dance music with whimsical elements, for instance using a bag of chips as an instrument, while laying claim to a trademark shuffling, jittery sort of house percussion that would help lay the groundwork for the "microhouse" scene embodied by artists like Akufen and Jesse Rose.
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Under a slew of psuedonyms, including Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, Herbert has managed to create music that successfully walks that finest of lines - delving deep into experimentation while still delivering a pop immediacy.
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Clever use of sampled real-life elements, often with a playful sense of humor, was another Herbert innovation. On his 1998 classic, Around The House, Herbert created deep, soulful dance music composed largely out of the sounds of everyday household objects. Following a similar trend, Bodily Functions was based on samples of the human body - hair, skin, even internal organs. If that sounds esoteric, it wasn't at all - Herbert let the samples form the foundations of his tracks rather than crowding the stage.
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Similarly, "The Audience," featuring vocals by his wife Dani Siciliano, might have subversively broached existential questions of personal identity and the artist-listener relationship when listened to closely, but it was also as appealing a house anthem as you could ask for.
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"Goodbye Swingtime," his 2003 masterpiece, was couched as a political protest record, but it might as well have been a protest against musical conformity, abandoning the house music template in favor of future-inflected swing music. A surprisingly effective release, the album confirmed Herbert's status as an artist who truly forges his own musical aesthetic, rather than following trends as so many in the dance music world do.
