The Matthew Herbert Big Band “The Story”
Matthew Herbert‘s latest offering isn’t made entirely from sampled food sounds, but as with that […]
Matthew Herbert‘s latest offering isn’t made entirely from sampled food sounds, but as with that record, the musical innovator has a bone to pick on his latest album. Besides being a dense palate of avant-jazz, There’s Me and There’s You is, at its heart, a collection of protest songs whose subjects span the Iraq war, climate change, religion, monarchy… pretty much everything that shows up on the front page of BBC news every morning.
“The Story,” which aims its pointer at economic inequality, was created from a collection of mainstream media products, including The Sun newspaper, gossip magazines, and a Madonna album. “This track is about the absence of anything of consequence in so much of our media,” Herbert says. “It’s part of a collective failure of the imagination, and a determined and considered plan by corporate media companies for it to remain that way. That’s part of my responsibility as an artist, to try and reconnect those dots.”
As usual, Herbert is backed by his inimitable Big Band, featuring some of Britain’s best musicians.
