Matthew Herbert, August 23 at Irving Plaza
By NICK SYLVESTER | August 29, 2006
Matthew Herbert |
U’d rere Skye is the Morcheeba chick, who could have been a pretty hip/cool high school chorus instructor ($25/hour) if she hadn't right-place, right-timed herself as trip-hop's last girl scout. Pretty voice: "velvety" they say (she is, in fact, black), the kind of pretty, velvety black voice people without girlfriends think people withgirlfriends make out to. This voice, and a few cover songs, was enough for most people at Irving Plaza. Behind Skye were some pretty frumpy looking dudes on bass-guitar-keyb, who for the most part kept things smooth, chill, good-time-havin', etc. The mostly young crowd crunched up to the stage when Skye launched into this dramatic, no-drums version of Gorillaz' "Feel Good Inc." -- because this song's melody is actually beautiful, guys, it's not just about the jam -- and when the crowd uncrunched themselves, they all had bags around their eyes, erectile dysfunction, overdue alimony.Sideline: Obviously I'm vexed by the prospect that one day I might like or even love Skye Music. I saw it happen to my parents. Dad was a bad-ass drummer who knew all the parts to every Kansas song. Once Mom played "Making Time" on the Wurlitzer. Now they both think Russ Freeman and the Rippingtons are the new MAZE. They both hear that Chuck Mangione song on the car radio and drive by the house and roll the windows down and yell at my brothers and sisters and me, "Quick get in the car! Your favorite song is on! The funky part is coming up!" And I really don't want to get in the car.
Funny thing re: supra is I could totally say the same about Matthew Herbert. He's a British house producer with dogmatic, occasionally self-spiting obedience to an insane sampling code -- all his source material is sampled conceptually, not merely aesthetically, e.g. recording the sound of fifteen phonebooks dropping from a window as a metaphor for the civilians killed in Iraq (I know I know I know) -- but when he sticks to dance tempos he's pretty much irrefutable. Integral to Herbert's sound too are Dani Siciliano's vocals -- understated, present but fragile, a counterpoint to Euro-house's huge soaring no-nonsense female anthems (in general). Granted, sometimes Herbert writes some serious duds which Dani can't sell at all, but in general she's sultry --look it up in the book.
And yet she wasn't there -- replaced, in fact, by a DUDE, which threw me hard and right away. A laidback sortasoul groove that never bucks or pitches fever, "Something Isn't Right" has this beautiful male-female call-response motif where the man says, "There must be something wrong," then the woman says, "I don't feel love," and a second after the song ends you realize that "something isn't right" is what a person who doesn't feel love SAYS when she's in love. It's one of my favorite songs of the year, but live it felt like a lie -- like half the story.
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