For almost thirty years, the British composer has drawn the raw material for his poetic and political works from the sounds and objects that populate our daily lives, and now from the world of living things. His new album The Horse is an ambitious musical journey dedicated to the world of the horse, combining sampling, orchestra and new string and wind instruments... made from the skeleton of an equine.

A singular figure on the electro scene since 1995, Matthew Herbert has established himself as a master of sampling. On stage, he records live, assembles and rhythms sounds generated from a pepper shaker, a coffee grinder, a kettle, a toothbrush or a packet of potato chips, in the form of percussive, minimalist and playful music akin to house.

An inspired DJ, a remixer courted by pop figures and a composer working under a plethora of pseudonyms (Wishmountain, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy and, more simply, Herbert), the British artist cannot be reduced to the simple figure of an inventive producer who draws inspiration from the ideas of musique concrète and transposes them to the dance floor. Rather, his work, boosted by his art of collage, draws on the timbres of everyday life and the poetry of his objects, in the form of musical projects that are by turns abstract, experimental, dancefloor or even more pop and jazz, like his past collaboration with singer Dani Siciliano or alongside his big band.

And above all, in contrast to French musique concrète and the formalism of much research music, Herbert attaches the utmost importance to the provenance, aura, nature and primary function of the object, or living being, from which the sound is recorded and from which all the sources for his albums are drawn.

In 2003, he drew up his own manifesto, a kind of sampling ethic, which set the aesthetic, economic and political framework for his future work. From then on, the objects-instruments they use prove to carry a political value or potential. Through albums such as Plat du Jour (2005) and Tesco (2011), his work humorously evokes and denounces the dominant consumerism and capitalism, using torn, shredded or crushed objects. At the dawn of the 2010s, his work tackles the question of the organic and the living, whether it's the commodification and industrialization of the animal world with One Pig (2011) or the sounds of our own human body with A Nude - A Perfect Body (2016), a nude project in musical form.

Horse, published in May 2023, follows the same dynamic. The album metaphorically revives the body of a horse whose skeleton Matthew Herbert has acquired. His instrumentarium was first conceived by neo-luthiers such as Henry Dagg, Sam Underwood and Graham Dunning, who transformed, for example, a pelvis and horsehair into a lyre, a tibia into a flute, and various bones into whistles or percussion instruments. It also includes samples and objects that have been rubbed or percussed, all from the equestrian world, whether in breeding, hunting, veterinary medicine or horse racing. To this vast array of tools and sounds is added the contribution of the London Contemporary Orchestra, whose musicians play using both these new tools and their classical instrumentarium.

The album begins with a series of studies, one might say, based on primary sounds that evoke an ancestral, almost prehistoric culture, before moving on to more straightforward melodies (" The Horse's Pelvis is a Lyre "), electro-like rhythms (" The Horse is Prepared ", "The Horse is Mechanised") or orchestral lines (" The Horse is Quiet ", "The rider (not the horse)"). Over the course of this truly extraordinary album, we gradually let ourselves be guided and tamed by these very particular timbres and textures, which soon form a kind of sonic body, made of flesh and bone, within which our listening progresses and unfolds, as if we were succeeding in grasping the nature and otherness of the animal.

The Horse can thus be listened to as a sensory and literally immersive musical experience or, more globally, as a meditation on our relationship with the living, as the artist recently confided to our confreres at Music Radar.
" We wouldn't have music without animals, whether we're talking about drum skins or violin and guitar strings, which have long been made from animal guts. Bows for stringed instruments are made from horsehair and, of course, violins and cellos are made from felled trees. We are literally exploiting living things to produce and compose music. It's our duty to find a less violent and healthier relationship with our environment, whether we're talking about music itself or our way of life ".

Jean-Yves Leloup

Matthew Herbert x London Contemporary Orchestra, The Horse (Modern Recordings)