Matthew Herbert

If Around the House marked Matthew Herbert's move from the dancefloor to the comforts of home, complete with samples of quotidian clatter, 2001's Bodily Functions found him expanding his ambitions and incorporating sounds of the eponymous subject matter -- brushing teeth, rubbing skin -- tweaked and massaged to nestle perfectly within warm layers of keyboards, strings and horns. Herbert's songwriting has never been better than it is here, with Dani Siciliano's voice topping it all off with a hint of intimate mystery.

A man with a manifesto, Matthew Herbert won't use pre-existing sounds in his
jazz-meets-house compositions, only live instrumentation, found sounds and happy
accidents. On Bodily Functions, his eighth LP, he samples the body electric, using the
various creaks, stirs and bends of the human form to percussive ends. The sprightly
heartbeat of Matmos' Martin Schmidt propels the systolic house of "Foreign Bodie... More >