Matthew Herbert likes things conceptual. Who would be surprised if, when making breakfast every morning, he makes five slices of bacon, each from a different manufacturer, to show how things can be the same and different at one time? It may be inefficient, but he’s making a point. Most of Matthew Herbert’s records are inefficient, records made from strange, obscure sources when he could make electronic music the way everyone else does. Resident Advisor reports that Herbert has a new album, The End of Silence, coming out June 24 through the producer’s own Accidental label. Obviously, the first question: what’s the concept this time? Sit down, it’s a little tiny bit of a doozy.
In 2011, war photographer Sebastian Meyer was bombed by Libyan air forces. A 10-second sound recording of this incident was captured. This same 10-second sound recording makes up the entirety of The End of Silence. Since Matthew Herbert is into both concepts and making listenable full-length albums, this new record is more than 10 seconds long. That same 10-second recording has been, as Herbert puts it, “fragmented and atomised” into samples, which were then performed by Herbert’s band and recorded over three days at a barn in the Welsh countryside. That session has been split into three tracks, which, together, make up The End of Silence. The first of those tracks you can hear below. It answers the question of how that 10-second sample became way, way longer than 10 seconds.