Herbert - Scale
Tracklist:
- Something Isn't Right
- The Movers and the Shakers
- Moving Like A Train
- Harmonise
- We're In Love
- Birds of a Feather
- Those Feelings
- Down
- Movie Star
- Just Once
- Wrong
The one thing that always amazed me the most about old Motown hits was how many hooks they were able to fit into one song. The best hits were so perfectly orchestrated and easy to recognize and so much fun to listen to you can’t help but smile sometimes.
Though obviously he doesn’t hit the same highs as the best of Motown, Herbert’s Scale displays the same enthusiasm and exuberance for pop music (though technically I guess this should be called micro-house or some other equally useless genre classification). Scale hits the mark somewhere around Beck’s Midnite Vultures or Jamie Lidell’s recent conversion from IDM maven to full-throated soul crooner, but something that separates this from either Beck or Jamie Lidell’s work is that this feels less like a genre exercise and more like a sincere piece of music. Scale is an album that’s easy to enjoy regardless of whether or not you agree with Herbert’s politics.
Scale is somewhat of a departure for Matthew Herbert, who has a history of having some unique unifying themes for his albums. On last year’s Plat du Jour he crafted micro-house songs entirely from samples of espresso machines and other food products and their packaging (he makes no secret of his fiercely leftist political leanings), and on Around the House he crafted songs from samples taken from, you guessed it, around his house.
So it comes as a bit of a surprise to hear this album that, from a quick initial listening, is seemingly devoid of any political intent or gimmicky theme. On closer inspection, Herbert has chosen to submerge his sharp political barbs beneath the most enjoyable music he’s ever made, with lines like, “if you hate the destination, enjoy the journey, ‘cos you can’t get off”.
Even though this album lacks an all-encompassing theme for its sample sources, it isn’t entirely lacking in sample use. Last year Herbert solicited his fans for some new sample material and gave them a number to call where they could put some sounds onto his answering machine. Herbert supposedly used something from every single call he received and put them all on “Just Once”.
It’s entirely a credit to Herbert’s talent that this song doesn’t fall flat on its face. It’s the most texturally interesting track on the album, though it is also the most lacking in the hook department. Elsewhere Herbert uses all sorts of odd sample that aren’t so obvious on a casual listen, but in the liner notes he includes pictures of a small percentage of the sources (over 700 were used in total).
Herbert has a knack for loading his songs with a lot of material without making them feel crowded (a concept Sufjan Stevens has yet to grasp). A great example of this is on the last two minutes or so of “Down” where the song rides along with strings, vocals and a number of electronic bleeps and you would think adding another layers would mess with the mix and sound sloppy, but at the five minute mark Herbert pulls some more hooks out of his seemingly bottomless bag and the addition is utterly seamless.
Another highlight comes on “Birds of a Feather” where the vocals (provided by Neil Thomas, Dani Siciliano and Dave Okumu) lock together with a crisp horn sample atop a bed of strings before splitting into three separate complimentary vocal melodies.
Meticulously produced and arranged, Scale may not technically be the best Herbert album (Around the House and Bodily Functions are of equal or perhaps greater quality), but it’s definitely the most fun to listen to. It’s the perfect soundtrack for cruising around on a hot summer day.
MP3 Samples:
The Movers and the Shakers
Movie Star