Release Date: 14th January 2022
Musca is the next in the series of domestic house albums to follow the groundbreaking LP classics Around The House (1998), and Bodily Functions (2001).
2021 is proving to be a bumper year for Herbert fans who can also look forward to a package of very special 12” remixes later this summer and the premiere of 10-years-in-the-making-documentary, Symphony of Noise, about his work with sound.
After the wide expanse of his last big band album The State Between Us made with more than 1000 musicians and singers across Europe, this album instead is inward looking. Born of both intimacy and collaboration, features eight singers, Verushka, Siân Roseanna, Allie Armstrong, Bianca Rose, Melissa Uye-Parker, Daisy Godfrey, Y’akoto and Joy Morgan - all of whom Matthew has never worked with before or met face to face. It also features musicians Nick Ramm, Tom Herbert, Tom Skinner, Finn Peters, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian and Leo Taylor, who, like the singers, all self-recorded and in isolation from each other.
Matthew says: “Like presumably many other albums made during the last year, Musca reflects on navigating the challenges and joys of our most intimate relationships whilst the world is in turmoil. Not just with Covid, but with the rise in state and political violence, facebook-friendly fascism, white supremacy and a climate in crisis.”
Matthew has talked about the need to retreat to an earlier, more familiar way of creating music as a form of solace during an unstable year. Having completed his PhD last year about the ethics of composing with sound and with his next experimental project based on more than one billion sounds, Musca is a moment of introspection, a pause. The album takes its name from musca - the genus part of the latin name for a housefly and includes a variety of sounds from around the farm where he lives, including a synth made from his wife’s dog, one of his pig’s snoring and fox cubs gekkering.
Matthew continues, “The week last year when I wrote most of these songs seems like another era altogether. I have no idea how they will sound a year later now the context has changed so markedly. The optimist in me wants to leap forwards, vaccinated into the sunshine brandishing the NHS logo, but the realist in me is aghast at the wave of death unleashed upon this country by an incompetent and corrupt government. The record probably has ended up with both of those things however - optimism that an alternative way of organising ourselves is possible and anger and gloom that we’re not there yet.”
The 13 track album has been mixed by Matthew and mastered by long term collaborator and Grammy winning engineer, Mandy Parnell (Björk, Brian Eno and Aphex Twin). The artwork is by Sarah Hopper who has done nearly all the artwork for Matthew’s house music output for 25 years.
A1 Two Doors featuring Joy Morgan
A2 Hypnotised featuring Mel Uye-Parker
A3 Might As Well Be Magical featuring Allie Armstrong
B1 Chain Reaction featuring Bianca Rose
B2 Fantasy featuring Verushka
B3 The Impossible featuring allie Armstrong
B4 Unrestorable featuring Siân Roseanna
C1 Tell Me A Secret featuring Siân Roseanna
C2 The Slip
C3 The Horror featuring Allie Armstrong
C4 The Way featuring Y’akoto
D1 Be Young featuring Daisy Godfrey
D2 Gold Dust featuring Bianca Rose
D3 Let Me Sleep featuring Bianca Rose
![Herbert - Musca [2 x Yellow LP in Gatefold] - Unearthed Sounds](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0488/8057/products/AC165C1_{width}x.jpg?v=1626957512)
Release Date: 14th January 2022
Musca is the next in the series of domestic house albums to follow the groundbreaking LP classics Around The House (1998), and Bodily Functions (2001).
2021 is proving to be a bumper year for Herbert fans who can also look forward to a package of very special 12” remixes later this summer and the premiere of 10-years-in-the-making-documentary, Symphony of Noise, about his work with sound.
After the wide expanse of his last big band album The State Between Us made with more than 1000 musicians and singers across Europe, this album instead is inward looking. Born of both intimacy and collaboration, features eight singers, Verushka, Siân Roseanna, Allie Armstrong, Bianca Rose, Melissa Uye-Parker, Daisy Godfrey, Y’akoto and Joy Morgan - all of whom Matthew has never worked with before or met face to face. It also features musicians Nick Ramm, Tom Herbert, Tom Skinner, Finn Peters, Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian and Leo Taylor, who, like the singers, all self-recorded and in isolation from each other.
Matthew says: “Like presumably many other albums made during the last year, Musca reflects on navigating the challenges and joys of our most intimate relationships whilst the world is in turmoil. Not just with Covid, but with the rise in state and political violence, facebook-friendly fascism, white supremacy and a climate in crisis.”
Matthew has talked about the need to retreat to an earlier, more familiar way of creating music as a form of solace during an unstable year. Having completed his PhD last year about the ethics of composing with sound and with his next experimental project based on more than one billion sounds, Musca is a moment of introspection, a pause. The album takes its name from musca - the genus part of the latin name for a housefly and includes a variety of sounds from around the farm where he lives, including a synth made from his wife’s dog, one of his pig’s snoring and fox cubs gekkering.
Matthew continues, “The week last year when I wrote most of these songs seems like another era altogether. I have no idea how they will sound a year later now the context has changed so markedly. The optimist in me wants to leap forwards, vaccinated into the sunshine brandishing the NHS logo, but the realist in me is aghast at the wave of death unleashed upon this country by an incompetent and corrupt government. The record probably has ended up with both of those things however - optimism that an alternative way of organising ourselves is possible and anger and gloom that we’re not there yet.”
The 13 track album has been mixed by Matthew and mastered by long term collaborator and Grammy winning engineer, Mandy Parnell (Björk, Brian Eno and Aphex Twin). The artwork is by Sarah Hopper who has done nearly all the artwork for Matthew’s house music output for 25 years.
A1 Two Doors featuring Joy Morgan
A2 Hypnotised featuring Mel Uye-Parker
A3 Might As Well Be Magical featuring Allie Armstrong
B1 Chain Reaction featuring Bianca Rose
B2 Fantasy featuring Verushka
B3 The Impossible featuring allie Armstrong
B4 Unrestorable featuring Siân Roseanna
C1 Tell Me A Secret featuring Siân Roseanna
C2 The Slip
C3 The Horror featuring Allie Armstrong
C4 The Way featuring Y’akoto
D1 Be Young featuring Daisy Godfrey
D2 Gold Dust featuring Bianca Rose
D3 Let Me Sleep featuring Bianca Rose
![Herbert - Musca [2 x LP in Gatefold] - Unearthed Sounds](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0488/8057/products/ac165_{width}x.jpg?v=1626957510)
Release Date: 9th July 2021
a1. (-)
a2. So Now...
a3. Around The House
b1. Close To Me
b2. The Last Beat
c1. Going Round
c2. This Time
d1. In The Kitchen
e1. We Still Have (The Music)
e2. Bedroom Jazz
f1. Never Give Up
f2. We Go Wrong
![Herbert - Around The House [3 x Clear Blue Vinyl LP] - Unearthed Sounds](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0488/8057/products/AC159C1_{width}x.jpg?v=1619113200)
Release Date: 9th July 2021
a1. It's Only
a2. Foreign Bodies
b1. Suddenly
b2. Leave Me Now
c1. I Know
c2. The Last Beat
c3.You're Unknown To Me
d1. You Saw It All
d2. Addiction
e1. On Reflection
e2. I Miss You
f1. The Audience
f2. About This Time Each Day
f3. It's Only A Reprise
![Herbert - Bodily Functions [3 x Clear Grey Vinyl LP] - Unearthed Sounds](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0488/8057/products/AC160C1_{width}x.jpg?v=1619113202)
Release Date: 26th March 2021
The Accidental label pushes on in it’s 21st anniversary year with ‘Thanet House EP’, a no nonsense, no pretention house 12” from renowned sound artist and designer Yuri Suzuki. Born in Tokyo in 1980, Suzuki studied in Tokyo and London, exploring the relationship between music and technology. His design and sound work is widely lauded, with examples of his practice being found in, among others, Tate Britain, MoMA and Mudan. In 2016 he was recognized by Design Miami, receiving their Designer of the Future award and in 2018 became a partner at the world’s largest independently owned design studio, Pentagram.
In 2020, he relocated from London to Margate and found himself locked down in the company of several classic dance music machines; Roland’s TR-808, 909, 303 and Juno. It was through these that ‘Thanet House’ was created.
Like the joy of witnessing an old contraption working just as it should, ‘Thanet House’ is a familiar, but inviting affair. The combination of those famous machines is hardly a new idea, yet there is an undeniable joy to hearing the results of them working in harmony, guided by the expert ear of one like Suzuki. His passion for Chicago/acid house is evident throughout. Every boom, bap, snap and slap count, creating simple but effective dance floor moments for active feet and loose minds.
Opener ‘Intensive Washing’ builds on a solid 909 groove with rolling rimshots, subtle 303 and a juno bassline reminiscent of Mr Fingers seminal work with Trax Records. ‘Side Effect’ doesn’t let the ball drop, with the time honoured amalgamation of throbbing 808 drums and a squelching, infectious acid loop, before the record closes with the tight and bouncy rhythms of ‘Morning 808’.
a1. Yuri Suzuki - Intensive Washing
b1. Yuri Suzuki - Side Effect
b2. Yuri Suzuki - Morning 808

Release Date: 25th August 2017
For those who know, Bambooman is one of the most sought after, probing, and distinctive voices in UK electronic music right now.
The Yorkshire born producer’s catalogue builds into an aural mosaic, comprising everything from scrunched up hip-hop to techno deviance, all delivered with an impish sense of individuality.
Yet now, after six meandering but inspired EPs, Bambooman is ready to break with all this and drop his debut album ‘Whispers’. “I choose to release an album at this point as I felt I was finally confident enough with my sound and techniques to make the album I wanted to make,” he says. “I was careful to make it as honest and original as possible, whilst at the same time paying homage to the music and artists who have most inspired me.”
“It’s more honest than my previous work,” he insists, “and it resonates with me more.”
‘Whispers’ certainly resonates. It’s a lengthy, bucolic work, an album of great breadth but also one of sustained mood – think those hazy summer evenings when shadows stretch out across the road, and autumn lingers around the corner.
In contrast to last year’s ‘Feel’ EP – his first on new home Accidental Recordings – this new album has a dusty, organic, and decidedly personal feel, much more at home with Jon Hassel’s ‘fourth world’ aesthetic than the club.
“I used lots of music concrete and electro-acoustic style processing techniques on the recordings across the album, which helped to give the sounds a more other-worldly aesthetic.”
“I tried to demonstrate the more personal techniques and processes I have developed over the years within the tracks, to give them more character and originality.”
The results are also imbued with an incredible sense of mystery, with Bambooman’s productions frequently being shot through with a hallucinatory sense of the uncanny. Entirely self-composed, ‘Whispers’ utilises “lots of field recordings that I’ve collected over the last few years, while within the tracks you can find lots of the instruments, percussion, bells and whistles that have been gathered throughout my life.”
In certain ways ‘Whispers’ is entirely autobiographical: Bambooman reaches back to his varied alter egos, to the ambient releases, art commissions, and soundtrack projects that litter his discography. The cover art was even pieced together by Oliver Pitt – of Glasgow group Golden Teacher – who was an early ally in the producer’s sonic quest.
Stylistically ‘Whispers’ veers from avant hip-hop of Flying Lotus to the theoried composition of Terry Riley, from the future-forward percussive energy of Battles to the ever-evolving electronics of Mark Pritchard. It’s a record marks by a fiercely independent spirit, but also by a close-knit cast of collaborators.
King Kashmere takes a starring turn, following the pair’s collision on the recent ‘SUPERGOD’ EP. “To me he was and still is the most talented and forward thinking MC in the UK, and has proven this time and time again,” explains Bambooman. “He’s a true wordsmith and has the great voice and clarity to match.”
Segilola is becoming a permanent fixture in the producer’s work, and her voice helps push him down fresh avenues. “It didn’t make sense to make a debut album without her powerful and beautiful voice making an appearance on it,” he admits.
Each vocal is recorded, chopped up and then spliced across the album, with Elsa Hewitt also making a number of appearances and re-appearances. “It’s been really interesting working with her vocals,” he enthuses. “I sometimes think she sounds quite 90s on my tracks – but in a good way, if that makes any sense!”
A wonderfully picturesque, intensely visual experience, ‘Whispers’ is set to be followed by a number of live shows. Bambooman will launch the LP at East London’s creative hot-house Total Refreshment Centre on August 10th, before flying out to Montreal for the ever-vital MUTEK Festival.
The ‘Whispers’ album was partly funded by PRS Foundation.
a1. Blocked
a2. Brisk
a3. Daxamite
a4. Bird Season
a5. Frost
a6. Whispers
a7. Bronze
a8. Melt
b1. Static
b2. Louie
b3. Strain
b4. Manatee
b5. Water Break
b6. Caves
