Matthew Herbert

Matthew Herbert is a musician, producer and experimental sound artist often using the sounds of everyday items to make music.

Also known under the aliases Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, Matthew Herbert is a critically acclaimed British electronic musician, artist and innovator with an extraordinary range of work.

In 1998 his first release Around The House combined dance beats and aesthetics with everyday kitchen objects. His first record to receive world-wide distribution was Bodily Functions in 2001, which sampled and manipulated internal organs.

He is constantly in demand as a producer and remixer working with the likes of Moloko, Motorbass, Alter Ego, Ron Trent, Bjork and Jamie Lidell.

Matthew Herbert set up Accidental Records to bring all of his early releases and new work under the same umbrella. He has also collaborated with the music course at Goldsmiths to create NX Records, which has spawned artists such as James Blake.

He has released two Big Band Albums – Goodbye Swingtime (2003) and There’s me and There’s you for which he recorded inside the Houses of Parliament, at a landfill site, and in the lobby of the British Museum with 70 volunteers.

The Brexit Big Band is his most recent undertaking – a two-year collaborative project right across Europe, celebrating artistic and musical collaboration and communities across national borders, leading up to an album on the date Britain leaves the EU.

His work has increasingly developed a strong political edge. Plat du Jour, a record made entirely from objects and situations in the food chain, includes a the sound of a tank driving over a recreation of the dinner that Nigella Lawson cooked for George Bush and Tony Blair.

In 2005 he created a Manifesto that exists as a set of guidelines for his own music making process. A few of the rules include: No drum machines. No synthesizers. No presets. No replication of traditional acoustic instruments is allowed where the financial and physical possibility of using the real ones exists.