Matthew Herbert

Matthew Herbert (born in 1972), also known as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, 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.

In the same year his 2001 track "Café de Flore", originally recorded for a Yves St Laurent fashion show and named after the Café de Flore in Paris, was featured prominently in the soundtrack of the film Café de Flore.

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 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."

In 2010 Matthew Herbert released two of a three part trilogy of albums.

The first, One One, was entirely written and performed by Herbert alone, the second, One Club, was made exclusively out of sounds recorded at the Robert Johnson nightclub in Offenbach in Germany on one night.

That same year he also released a reworking of Mahler's tenth symphony for the Deutsche Grammophon's Recomposed series.

Much of the recording was made inside Mahler's composing hut in Toblach, by his graveside and in a crematorium.

In late 2011, the final part of the trilogy, One Pig, was released.

Herbert recorded the life cycle of a farmed pig from birth to the dinner plate.

The animal rights organisation PETA condemned the album when it was announced without hearing it.

Herbert, who is not a vegetarian, responded that their complaints were "utterly absurd" and that he wanted his music to encourage people to "listen to the world a little more carefully."

On 11 March 2013 a newly commissioned work by Herbert, for orchestra with electronics, based on a work by Rameau, was performed at The Roundhouse in London, as part of BBC Radio 3's "Baroque Remixed" series.

In March 2013, his first five albums under moniker Herbert were released as Herbert Complete featuring bonus material and Abbey Road Sessions.

Initially it was an iTunes Store (now Apple Music) exclusive (and subsequently released for streaming on Spotify too), but has never been sold in lossless physically or digitally.

On 20 March 2015 Herbert announced The Shakes, his first album of dance music in nine years.

This was followed up with the release of "Middle," the first track from the album.

The Shakes was released in an innovative way, making one track and short accompanying film available on streaming and video platforms each week leading up to the album release.

On 22 October 2021 Herbert released the album Musca on Accidental Records.

In October 2023 Herbert received an Ivor Novello Award nomination at The Ivors Classical Awards.