Matthew Herbert is no stranger to offbeat recording techniques. On records like 2001’s Bodily Functions (!K7) and last year’s Plat du Jour (Accidental), he sampled everything from heartbeats to crushed Starbucks cups and wove them into bumptious micro-house, languid electronic ballads, and melodic jazz. Herbert rarely tinkers with his sampler for the sake of generating weird noises–like his spiritual allies Matmos, he girds each record with theoretical underpinnings. But while Plat du Jour, by Herbert’s own admission, sometimes became a bit too weighty in its exploration of the food chain, his new album, Scale, contains his sunniest and warmest tunes yet, despite having a meditation on life, death and distance encoded in its sampled DNA.

“I wanted to hold up a mirror to society,” Herbert says of the record. “It can be charming and warm and generous and luxurious and [can] look like it’s having fun but actually underneath it, there’s a sinister tone. [Scale is] based on violence, whether it be historical violence–like the British empire, in our case, or slavery–or current violence like the war in Iraq. In a way that’s part of the illusion of the record, the illusion of everything being okay.”

The illusory charm and warmth Herbert speaks of comes through right away on songs like “Something Isn’t Right,” where Neil Thomas and Dani Siciliano trade vocals over chugging, string-drenched backdrops. But for all Scale’s glossy surfaces, there’s always something gritty going on beneath–a framework constructed of countless found sounds and samples assembled by the genre’s new master.

For instance, what is that jet noise puncturing “Moving Like a Train?” It’s not an innocent passenger plane, but a British Tornado bomber (a tiny depiction of which appears, along with the over 700 other items Herbert sampled for the album, on the cover artwork). This mix of the mundane and the unusual, of pacifist and violent elements, is part of Herbert’s point. “It’s about this distance in our lives, between the things that we do–between our childhood and our death, for example,” he offers. “We have constant ways of measuring our childhood–we have birthdays every year, for example–so we know how far we are from our childhood, but we never know how far we are from our death. We don’t know if it’s this afternoon or in 100 years’ time. So really I’m looking for ways to express this distance, whether metaphorically or literally, [through sampling]. The sound of a coffin is [something] you may never hear, but there are sounds [on the record] that you may hear every day, like the [crunching of] breakfast cereal.”

Welcome to Matthew Herbert’s micro-world, where even the seemingly innocent sound of breakfast cereal is laden with meaning. And don’t even get him started on the cereal box–less a container than a vehicle for sinister cultural subtext. “I couldn’t believe how disgraceful it was,” he says of the cereal box he bought. “It was limited-edition Apple Jacks, and there’s a photograph of it. It has blue carrot shapes in it, but it says on the packet, ‘No apple taste! No carrot taste!’ It’s like it’s a selling point that it doesn’t taste of apples or carrots. It’s really a lunatic position the world is coming to. Proper madness!”

To keep himself from engaging in the polemics that weighed down Plat du Jour, Herbert intended to try a different approach to sampling for Scale. “My plan was to make a record where I hadn’t recorded any of the sounds or any of the musicians [myself]. In the end I did a bit of recording, so it didn’t quite work out that way, but the idea that the recording process itself is part of the metaphor of the record appealed to me. So we recorded some of the drums at 100 mph with the drummer in the back of my little BMW that’s 25 years old–so not [only were we] breaking the law, we could [have been] in personal danger. How does the drummer play if he thinks it’s going to be the last thing he ever plays? If you think of [the process] like that, instead of a conceptual burden, it becomes fun. Basically, I wrote a big list of [all the samples] I wanted and asked my assistant Alexis to go off and record them. He traveled the country and he had to call a lot of different people before they allowed me near a coffin. So if you look at the thanks on the album there’s a lot of “No thanks” to people who said no!”

The coffin is perhaps the central sample Scale. Twelve of them appear in the artwork, another artifact of Herbert’s twin desires for a theoretically stimulating process and an aesthetically pleasing result. “The coffins were recorded from the inside out–the microphone was inside the coffin–so unless you were buried alive, it’s a sound you will never hear. It’s the friction between the ordinary and the extraordinary that I was looking for. I recorded everything in groups of 12–that way I have the freedom to include one coffin per track, or put all 12 in one piece. I enjoyed the playfulness of having deliberate numbers of organizing things, to reinforce any ideas or motifs. It doesn’t make the slightest difference really, the sound is the same, but I like the rigor of it, and also it makes me laugh! Can’t underestimate that.”

The darkest turn on the album is “Just Once,” which is assembled from messages recorded on a special phone line. “I wanted to do a piece where I didn’t know any of the noises. I wanted to know how that affected how I wrote it and how I used it. Would I be more respectful or more playful? So [I set up a] hotline [for people to leave noises on]. I asked people not to say what the noise was and not to say their name or anything, so it could be one person leaving 177 messages, it could be my parents, it could be the Russian mafia killing someone! But what I like is there are now 177 people with a completely different relationship to the music, embedding their stories within the music, and nobody knows [what the sounds are] apart from them. The track is kind of about death [and] suicide bombing, and when you know that, it suddenly becomes even more spooky. And on top of that it’s coming down the telephone line, another expression of distance.”

Once this track sweeps by, the album ends on a goofy note–Matthew Herbert singing “Wrong” over a lone piano. He’s no Jamie Lidell, but the casual bar melody fits Herbert’s newfound playfulness, a cheeky mood that also emerges in the presentation of the album, with a booklet depicting everything from plastic toys to computer cables and writing so tiny that you cannot study the liner notes and listen to the music at the same time.

“I like that the artwork makes no distinction between what made noises and what was used. We had to decide somewhere to stop, otherwise we’d have to [include] all the food that we ate and all that stuff. If you wanted to recreate the record, these are all the things you’d have to assemble together somehow and work it out. But I think you’d come up with something completely different!”

It’s been more than 10 years since Larry Clark’s seminal Kids made every teenager in America want to move to New York City, and every parent in America want to keep them as far away as humanly possible. With Wassup Rockers, Clark brings his signature style to the West Coast, following a group of Latino punks on a racially and socially charged journey from their home in South Central to the surreal world of Beverly Hills. Like Kids, the film blurs the line between documentary and narrative filmmaking, with handheld cameras and non-actors taking starring roles.

Wassup Rockers grew out of a chance meeting between Clark and the teenage stars of the film while Clark was on a photo shoot for a French magazine. “My first thought was that you never see kids like this in film,” says the director. “They’re at an age where they should have the freedom to express themselves in any way they want to,” he continues. “But the peer pressure to conform in the ghetto is amazing–it’s stronger than Beverly Hills or the suburbs or anywhere else. These kids have to fight because they want to wear their hair long and listen to punk rock and skate and wear tight clothes and just have fun and not smoke pot [or] drink.”

After ascending a steep, rocky path in the blazing Jamaican sun, we reach the impressive entrance to Bobo Hill. A bamboo guardhouse manned by a Rasta in white military clothes is decorated with biblical quotes and has a plaque that reads “Ethiopian Congress.” Fresh-faced children dash about an idyllic settlement of wooden huts dispersed across a hillside, the entire thing surrounded by a bamboo fence in fading shades of red, gold, and green, the colors of the Ethiopian flag adopted by Rastafarians to pay homage to former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I, their spiritual leader.

Many would-be visitors fail to gain entrance to the camp. So, despite having a pre-arranged appointment, a camp priest’s “empress” (partner) as a guide, and wearing modest attire (a long skirt, tunic, and headscarf), nerves about failing the righteous test render me unable to appreciate the serene vibes. A female camp elder wearing robes and a turban–worn differently than the men by way of a fall, a flowing section of fabric hanging down the back–greets us wielding a calendar.

“When did your menstrual cycle finish?” she asks.

Women, both visitors and residents, are only allowed to roam around Bobo Hill 21 days after their menstrual cycle has finished, a time segment camp elders say allows for cleansing based on biblical teachings and the movement of the moon. For the average lady, this gives a window of opportunity for one week of freedom; she’ll spend the rest of her days making handicrafts, praying, and reading alongside other ovulating ladies inside a designated women’s hut (not a cage, as is rumored).

Fortunately, I’d been warned about this procedure and planned my visit accordingly.

“5th of February,” I chant.

Slowly she checks off the 22 days in between the February 5th and February 27th, then eyes me suspiciously. “OK. You’re free.”

In 1972, after being moved nine times by the Jamaican authorities, Bobo Hill in Nine Miles, Bull Bay, Jamaica became the base of the Boboshanti, the house of Rastafari brought to public attention by dancehall artists Sizzla, Capleton, and Turbulence. Unlike most Rastafarians–who regard only Haile Selassie as their spiritual leader–Bobos praise three powers that they regard as the perfect Trinity of King, Priest, and Prophet: Haile Selassie as King; Prince Emmanuel, a Jamaican man who started the movement in 1958, as Priest; and Marcus Garvey, the black nationalist crusader and leader of the “Back To Africa” movement, as Prophet.

Life at Bobo Hill is dominated by prayer and work, its 100 or so residents undertaking both with varying degrees of discipline. Religious practices closely emulate those of Jewish Mosaic Law, which adheres closely to the Ten Commandments as laid down by Moses in the Old Testament. A drum signals the start of early morning, midday, and evening prayers; a handful of priests participate in these rituals in the tabernacle, the camp’s holy site, while the rest of the camp sporadically takes part. During our three-hour visit we pray, always facing east towards Ethiopia, four times–once on entrance, once before our interview with the priests, once after the interview with the priests, and once during the camp’s official evening prayers. During these pious moments, cell phone ringtones pierce the air–the most ironic being Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

To generate both personal and camp income, ladies crochet and sew garments that the men sell outside the camp. Men make brooms–an item symbolic of the Bobos’ belief in earning an income, cooking in a communal kitchen, and growing crops. Before Prince Emmanuel died in the early ’80s (an event that surprised the community, who believed he was immortal and waited three days for him to rise before burying him) the camp had a self-sufficient system of food harvesting and wealth sharing. No official leader has been re-appointed, so the camp has become less organized and there is a clear lack of funds, made apparent by the incessant hawking of crafts throughout our time there.

Our guides are the friendly, humble, and relatively relaxed Priest Radcliffe and Priest Lloyd, members of the camp drumming group. Like the other 20-to-30-year-old drum group members, the humdrum nature of camp life clearly does not satisfy them despite their being entirely devoted to it. They are eager to tour the world and are in the process of setting up their own cultural record label. Many elder Bobos assert they want no association with the evils of reggae music (African drumming is fine), while the younger generation, including Priest Radcliffe, see it as “a way of bringing culture to the people in Babylon who need culture the most.”

The longer we stay at Bobo Hill, the more paradoxes emerge. The Boboshantis’ inspiring mission to live outside the “system” is marred by its repression of women and bizarre denial of death, which means the ill are carried from the camp to die outside and their corpses ignored until an outside family member or undertaker deals with them.

An elderly Bobo woman, permanently free since menopause, summarizes my confused feelings. “The devil is everywhere and here is no different. As a young woman I could not live here but many take the subjugation gladly compared to the sin in the outside world. I don’t live at Bobo Hill by listening to the rules. I live by listening to what’s in my heart.”