Smuggled Sounds: Matthew Herbert's Plat Du Jour

MHpdj2004 Restless innovator, sampling wizard, classically trained pianist and superstar collaborator, MATTHEW HERBERT is one of electronic music's most versatile and prolific figureheads. Recording under his own name as well as Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain, Radio Boy and others, Herbert has also produced and remixed artists as diverse as Björk, REM, John Cale, Roisin Murphy, Yoko Ono and Serge Gainsbourg.
An alchemist of avant-garde sound in the tradition stretching from Stockhausen to the Aphex Twin, Herbert combines playful pop sensibility with a strictly imposed experimental agenda. In his increasingly conceptual and political albums he has emerged as a unique figure in modern music: a kind of one-man Radiohead, or a Brian Eno for the 21st century.
The political content of Herbert's music has become increasingly overt in recent years. His 2004 album 'Plat Du Jour' was his most rigorously experimental to date, featuring sounds entirely derived from food and its packaging. Unified in concept and content, it used witty culinary metaphors to attack not just giant food companies but also the death penalty, body fascism and war in Iraq. In Britain, 'The Guardian' called the consequent live shows, complete with a chef making live smells "a wild stimulation of senses, feet and intellect".

Line up: Matthew Herbert (sampler); Peter Wraight (sampler/midi wind); Dave O'Higgins (sampler/midi wind); Phil Parnell (sampler/midi keyboards); Leo Taylor (percussion/bottles/domestic waste); Rosie Sykes (chef/cooking noises)

Chickens (7.35)
Coffee (7.04)
Sugar (6.00)
Water (5.46)
Apples - audience take a bite out of their apples
Diet (4.16)
Deathrow Dinner (5.03)
Bread (4.34)
Waste (5.34)
Tank (4.18)