Matthew Herbert Big Band - There's Me and There's You (Album)
As an electronic wunderkind, Matthew Herbert produced several albums of patchy, but at best sublime, pop that was notable for the lengths Herbert would go to create and capture the sounds he wanted. Herbert has recorded strings in dimly lit caverns, drums in a hot air balloon and used a squigee in place of the venerable TB-303 bassline generator.
Branching out into new directions with the Matthew Herbert Big Band the composer has turned his hand at Ellington inflected jazz arranging with an art-music twist. Working with live musicians in a big band context would appear one logical extension of Herbert’s electronic albums, which have featured progressively more complex orchestrations, and ‘sampling’ of real musicians. However the kitschy arrangements and high-art pretensions on There’s Me and There’s You are Herbert’s undoing and the album falls far short of his earlier solo work.
The albums 12 tracks are difficult to absorb in one sitting and while this is not a measure of the works value it is disappointing given Herbert’s erstwhile ear for catchy arrangements. For Herbert, the focus of the album is obviously his socio-political agenda and critique of western media, economics, governance and consumption. The albums cover presents a petition stating ‘We, the undersigned, believe that music can still be a political force of note and not just the soundtrack to over-consumption’. Herbert’s political convictions and his belief in music as a vital part of that dialogue are admirable however the implications of such a statement may have been more urgent if the music displayed anything like the same level of conviction.
Herbert tries very hard to be clever , even appropriating John Cage’s famous ‘silent’ piece 4’33” under the moniker ‘Nonsounds’, but all this cleverness has the net effect of erecting an austere barrier that may reward intellectual curiosity but eschews musics great ability to construct and convey emotion and meaning as a primary communicative medium.
