I know its been a while but my FTP monkey has returned now and with a bit of coaxing he can upload some tracks. Remember, I’m white so this music is not stolen, I just found it floating by.
First up is a piece off the new Matthew Herbert LP. Herbert is a London producer who, apart from making some gloriously broken and fuct house music under a range of pseudonyms, has spent the past few years producing music which adheres to his own Personal Contract for the Composition of Music. In short this means no sampling, no drum machines, no factory presets on equipment and complete transparency. This contract has led to 2001’s Bodily Functions, an LP composed of recordings of the human body. It’s a great album with kick drums made of the sounds of blood pumping and a track themed around eye surgery. As Herbert’s recording technique has become more abstract it becomes more important to actually know what it is he’s doing with the sounds. Herbert’s new Plat du Jour album have to be read in a different context than most toher music the listener will be exposed to. Each track is built around an aspect of the food industry. ‘The Truncated Life of a Modern Industrialised Chicken’ is built out of field recordings made in a warehouse full of battery farmed chickens, played against recordings made of 40 free range chickens.
The theme penetrates each piece in more ways than just the sources of the sound. In ‘The Nine Seeds of Navdanya’, a piece themed around seed production, exchange and encroaching copyright in India, the track is at 122bpm because there are 122 million people in India without a toilet. I’m going to post ‘Nigella, George, Tony and Me’ because it’s the most eye-catching piece on the record, along with the notes from Herbert’s Plat du Jour website where you can buy the whole album on a download for £5. Nigella Lawson is a British celebrity chef.
NIGELLA, GEORGE, TONY AND ME
we recreated the meal that nigella lawson cooked for george bush when he came to britain to thank tony blair for his support during the iraq war during the meal the wives ate separately. then we drove over the meal with a chieftan mk 10 battle tank from the mid-late sixties
we used only the finest ingredients, including duchy original organic products (a company run by prince charles with vastly different priorities than the government)
the menu:
roast pumpkin, radicchio and welsh goat’s feta
braised norfolk ham with honey and mustard glaze. creamed baked potatoes. seasonal vegetables
double baked apple pie, with cheddar crust. vanilla ice-cream or custard
an advisor to the foreign office baked the apple pie with his fiancee using one of nigella’s recipes. it was then taken to manassas, the site of one of the opening battles of the american civil war, where it was shot by an us ex-military intelligence officer using a 9mm luger (1937approx) as used by a nazi sd officer, colt 45 (model 1911) high standard .22.
all melodies and chords are samples of a wine glass and played by phil parnell and matthew herbert
matthew herbert-nigella george tony and me.mp3
—————
I was at home rooting through old tapes the other day and came across this. Synergy and Stylee on London’s Rude FM – from 98, 99? I’m not sure. Starts off with Brockie’s Turntable 1 and keeps getting better. Check the Junglist Raver verse about 10 minutes in.
Synergy and Stylee on Rude FM.MP3
