CD of the week Herbert:Bodily Functions
Matthew Krouse
Matthew Herbert’s genius is of a low key. As a bunch of love songs, Bodily Functions (Studio K7) talks for everyone. It says all the things one would want to say to one’s crush, the things one is too shy to articulate. Beneath its quiet and melodic exterior, it’s tense and really deep.
The album’s press release tell us that Herbert’s dad is a BBC sound technician, and he had a music teacher who played him jazz standards and Steve Reich. It also says that Herbert “is a left-wing humanist and idealist”. Well, all of this shows. Herbert may be considered a house master and a remixer, but in the most old-fashioned sense Bodily Functions is pure jazz.
A solely instrumental track like I Know, with muted trumpets and snares, could be Wynton Marsalis all the way.
Modelled primarily on the ethereal beauty of Dani Sicilianos’s voice, the album drifts from dance floor to lounge, with lyrics that could stand alone as poetry in a book. They’re scant, dramatic and upset.
Basically, we never tire of songs about love, particularly its downside. And now, with the ultra-lounge craze, it’s transpired that kids are listening to sounds uncannily similar to those their parents used to dig. In other words, nobody would be at all surprised if Bjrk suddenly recorded Fly Me to the Moon.
On that note, the album’s distributor, What’s Phat, has come up with the news that Herbert will produce a track called Therev on the upcoming album by Bjrk. And it’s obvious why. Bodily Functions is full of digital tricks, but it’s definitely not “tricksy”. It’s not at all overladen. It’s a sexy tribute to the ballads of an age gone by.