Matthew Herbert (GB)

Matthew Herbert is a musician and producer working predominantly in the field of electronic music. Known for ignoring the boundaries and mangling the conventions traditionally associated with the genre, he is one of the few independently-minded artists to have made a considerable impact on both media and public while striving to be innovative and experimental. “When everything I read politically and watch and hear has been absorbed, there comes a point where you must feel it viscerally otherwise you are closed to the horrors of it and thus closed to the possibility of action, closed to the idea that you could make a difference or could have prevented the outcome. This internalising of the struggle, the friction, the melancholy I feel should be at the emotional core of the work. After all, I am making music and not writing a newspaper article. But with the invention of the sampler, I can now explicitly root my work in the literal, critical present. I can describe the real in the frame of the imaginary.”