Matthew Herbert is a man of many guises - Doctor Rockit when a bit of avant-garde electro takes his fancy, Radioboy for the harder extremes and Herbert for something that's often lazily referred to as house music.
'Bodily Functions' should finally put paid to such generalisations and make official what we always suspected: Herbert really is out on his own.
This is an album that's destined to be referred to time and again as 'organic' but in order to recognise just how 'organic' these sounds are you'll need to delve a little deeper than the obvious inclusion of live instrumentation, occasional sampled studio outtakes and random 'people noise'. There's a clue in the introduction that Herbert himself gives to the album on his website when he refers to "the noises of blood and sleep, digestion and affection" which form the building blocks for much of what's here.
In fact, he states that wherever possible he's "tried to build the pieces around sounds taken from ourselves." What this means is that percussion sounds are taken from sources as unlikely as an unborn child, the contents of singer Dani Siciliano's bag on the day of recording, recordings of laser eye surgery and various bodily functions.
All this to conform to his own personal rules as outlined in PCCOM (Personal Contract For The Composition Of Music) that specifically outlaws the use of drum machines, samples from other people's music and factory preset keyboard sounds.
The resulting music is frequently sublime. Album opener, 'You're Unknown To Me', conveys the mother's incredulous relationship to a newborn child and brings the listener as close to the experience as they could possibly hope to be without having one of their own. Whilst there are more perfectly composed songs elsewhere on the album, the use of the unborn child as the sole source of percussive sounds provides as pure an expression of Herbert's manifesto as possible.
Much of 'Bodily Functions' evokes the intimate music of the 40s and 50s jazz vocalists with Dani Siciliano's lost-way-out-there delivery adding a haze to the already smoky intonation of the originals. The album's standout tracks, however, are tighter compositions more indebted to Herbert's immediate sonic pre-history.
'It's Only', 'You Saw It All ' and 'The Audience' all add weight to the claim that Herbert makes brilliantly fresh house music but you occasionally find yourself wishing that the metronomic pop and crackle of his beats would open themselves to greater rhythmic possibilities. When this album is finally accepted into those lists that magazines never tire of compiling, 'The Audience' will be listed as its highlight and 3:27 - the point at which full percussion, bass and vocal rejoin for a blissful impact - will be singled out as it's beautiful highlight. But please don't wait that long to enjoy it.
by James Poletti